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Connecticut  Agricultural  College 

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BOOK    920.02.G88    c.  1 

GRISWOLD    #    HOME    LIFE    OF    GREAT 

AUTHORS 


3  T153  00E11072  b 


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GREAT    AUTHORS    ;<^.^, 


BY 


|}t.^  HATTIE  TYN.G   GRISWOLD 


CHICAGO 

A.   C.   McCLURG  AND    COMPANY 
i8qi 


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Copyright 

By  a.  C.  McClurg  and  Co. 

A.D.  1886. 


PREFACE, 


The  author  of  these  sketches  desires  to  say- 
that  they  were  written,  not  for  the  special  student 
of  literary  biography,  who  is  already  familiar  with 
the  facts  here  given,  but  rather  for  those  busy 
people  who  have  little  time  for  reading,  yet  wish 
to  know  something  of  the  private  life  and  personal 
history  of  their  favorite  authors.  The  sketches  are 
not  intended  to  be  critical,  or  to  present  anything 
like  complete  biographies.  They  are  devoted  chiefly 
to  the  home  life  of  the  various  authors,  —  which, 
though  an  instructive  and  fascinating  study,  seems 
commonly  neglected  in  popular  biographies. 

It  should  be  added  that  a  few  of  these  sketches 
have  already  appeared  in  print,  but  they  have  been 
rewritten  to  adapt  them  to  their  present  purpose. 


H.  T.  G. 


Columbus,  Wis.,  October,  1886. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

Goethe  9 

Robert  Burns 24 

Madame  de  Stael 34 

William  Wordsworth 43 

Thomas  De  Quincey 54 

Walter  Scott 64 

Charles  Lamb 75 

Christopher  North 85 

Lord  Byron 94 

Shelley 102 

Washington  Irving 112 

William  Cullen  Bryant 122 

Ralph  Waldo  Emerson 133 

Thomas  Carlyle 142 

Victor  Hugo 150 

George  Sand 164 

Thomas  Babington  Macaulay 177 

Edward  Bulwer  Lytton 188 


8  CONTENTS. 


TfLGK 


Alfred  Tennyson 197 

Nathaniel  Hawthorne 207 

^   Henry  W.  Longfellow 220 

John  G.  Whittier 238 

V  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes' 251 

James  Russell  Lowell 262 

Robert  and  Elizabeth  Browning 274 

Charlotte  Bronte 286 

Margaret  Fuller 302 

Edgar  Allen  Poe 312 

William  Makepeace  Thackeray 322 

Charles  Dickens  .    , 335 

George  Eliot 351 

Charles  Kingsley 363 

John  Ruskin 372 


flome  iLife  of  d^reat  9lut!)ors* 


GOETHE. 

IN  an  old,  many-comered,  and  gloomy  house  at  Frank- 
fort-on-the- Main,  upon  the  28th  of  August,  1749, 
was  bom  the  greatest  German  of  his  day,  Wolfgang 
Goethe.  The  back  of  t"he  house,  from  the  second  story, 
commanded  a  very  pleasant  prospect  over  an  almost  im- 
measurable extent  of  gardens  stretching  to  the  walls  of 
the  city,  but  the  house  itself  was  gloomy,  being  shut  in 
by  a  high  wall.  Over  these  gardens  beyond  the  walls 
and  ramparts  of  the  city,  stretched  a  long  plain,  where 
the  young  Wolfgang,  serious  and  thoughtful,  was  wont  to 
wander  and  to  learn  his  lessons.  He  had  the  sort  of 
superstitious  dread  which  is  usually  the  inheritance  of 
children  with  a  poetic  nature,  and  suffered  greatly  in  child- 
hood from  fear.  He  was  obliged  by  his  father,  who  was  a 
stem  and  somewhat  opinionated  old  man,  to  sleep  alone, 
as  a  means  of  overcoming  this  fear ;  and  if  he  tried  to 
steal  from  his  own  bed  to  that  of  his  brothers,  he  was 
frightened  back  by  his  father,  who  watched  for  him  and 
chased  him  in  some  fantastic  disguise.  That  this  did  not 
tend  to  quiet  his  nerves  may  well  be  imagined,  and  it 
was  only  through  time  and  much  suffering  that  he  over- 
came his  childish  terrors.     His  mother  was  a  gay,  cheer- 


lo  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

ful  woman,  much  younger  than  his  father,  and  as  she 
was  only  eighteen  years  old  when  Wolfgang  was  bom, 
always  said  that  they  were  young  together.  She  had 
married  with  httle  affection  for  her  elderly  husband,  and 
it  was  in  her  favorite  son  that  she  found  all  the  romance 
and  beauty  of  her  life.  She  was  a  woman  of  strong 
character,  and  presents  one  of  the  pleasantest  pictures 
in  German  literature.  With  a  warm,  genial  nature,  full 
of  spirit  and  enthusiasm,  she  retained  to  the  last  days 
of  her  life  an  ardent  interest  in  all  the  things  which  de- 
lighted her  in  youth.  She  read  much,  thought  much, 
and  observed  much,  for  one  in  her  sphere  of  hfe,  and 
many  great  people  who  came  to  know  her  through  her 
son  learned  to  value  her  very  highly  for  herself  alone. 
She  corresponded  long  with  the  Duchess  Amaha,  and 
her  letters  were  much  enjoyed  at  the  Court  of  Weimar. 
Princes  and  poets  dehghted  to  honor  her  in  later  life,  and 
her  son  was  enthusiastic  in  his  devotion  to  her  till  the 
last.  She  comforted  him  through  his  rather  fanciful  and 
fantastic  childhood  as  much  as  she  could  without  directly 
interfering  with  the  discipline  of  the  didactic  father. 
Goethe  and  his  mother  were  both  taught  by  this  father, 
who  considered  her  almost  as  much  of  a  child  as  the 
boy  himself.  She  was  kept  busy  with  writing,  playing  the 
clavichord,  and  singing,  as  well  as  with  the  study  of 
Italian,  in  which  the  father  much  delighted ;  and  the  boy 
had  grammar,  and  the  Latin  classics,  and  a  geography  in 
memory-verses.  The  boy  soon  got  beyond  his  teacher, 
but  without  being  well-grounded  in  anything,  and  learned, 
as  such  children  are  apt  to  do,  much  more  from  his  own 
desultory  reading  than  from  any  instruction  which  was 
given  him.  In  the  library  were  the  beautiful  Dutch  edi- 
tions of  the  Latin  classics  and  many  works  relating  to 
Roman  antiquities  and  jurisprudence.  There  were  also 
the  Italian  poets,  and  many  books  of  travel,  and  many 
dictionaries  of  various  languages,  and  encyclopaedias  of 
science  and  art.  Through  all  these  the  boy  searched  for 
himself,  and  took  what  was  suited  to  his  taste,  astonishing 


GOETHE.  ,1 

the  slow  father  very  much  by  his  readiness,  and  soon 
becoming  famous  in  the  neighborhood  for  his  acquire- 
ments. Of  course  he  wrote  poetry  from  the  earhest  age, 
and  of  course  many  people  predicted  his  future  great- 
ness. Most  of  all,  his  mother  believed  in  him,  and 
watched  him  with  adoring  solicitude.  His  love  for  art 
showed  itself  very  early,  and  he  made  friends  with  artists, 
and  visited  their  studios  frequently  when  a  mere  boy. 
His  father  had  a  fondness  for  pictures,  and  had  some 
good  views  of  Italian  scenery  and  art  in  his  own  house ; 
and  it  was  probably  from  him  that  the  boy  derived  his 
earhest  liking  for  such  things.  His  passion  for  the  theatre 
also  made  itself  known  at  the  earliest  age,  and  gave  him 
his  most  intense  youthful  pleasures. 

His  taste  for  natural  science  was  also  very  strong  in 
early  childhood,  and  he  analyzed  flowers,  to  see  how  the 
leaves  were  inserted  into  the  calyx,  and  plucked  birds  to 
see  how  the  feathers  were  inserted  in  the  wings,  when  a 
mere  infant,  as  it  appeared  to  his  mother.  Indeed,  all 
the  strong  tastes  of  the  man  showed  themselves  in  a 
decided  manner  in  this  precocious  child,  and  his  hap- 
hazard training  allowed  his  genius  to  develop  along  its 
own  natural  lines  in  a  healthy  manner. 

He  even  exhibited  at  a  very  youthful  period  his  fatal 
facility  for  falKng  in  love,  and  naturally  enough,  with  a 
girl  older  than  himself,  named  Gretchen.  He  was  cured 
of  his  first  passion  only  by  finding  out  that  the  girl 
regarded  him  as  a  child,  which  filled  him  with  great 
indignation.     He  says  :  — 

*'  My  judgment  was  convinced,  and  I  thought  I  must  cast 
her  away  ;  but  her  image  !  —  her  image  gave  me  the  lie  as 
often  as  it  again  hovered  before  me,  which  indeed  happened 
often  enough. 

"  Nevertheless,  this  arrow  with  its  barbed  hooks  was  torn 
out  of  my  heart ;  and  the  question  then  was,  how  the  inward 
sanative  power  of  youth  could  be  brought  to  one's  aid.  I 
really  put  on  the  man  ;  and  the  first  thing  instantly  laid 
aside  was  the  weeping  and  raving,  which   I  now  regarded 


12  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

as  childish  in  the  highest  degree.  A  great  stride  for  the 
better  !  For  I  had  often,  half  the  night  through,  given  my- 
self up  to  this  grief  with  the  greatest  violence  ;  so  that  at 
last,  from  my  tears  and  sobbing,  I  came  to  such  a  point  that 
I  could  scarcely  swallow  any  longer  ;  eating  and  drinking 
become  painful  to  me ;  and  my  chest,  which  was  so  nearly 
concerned,  seemed  to  suffer.  The  vexation  I  had  constantly 
felt  since  the  discovery  made  me  banish  every  weakness. 

*'  It  seemed  to  me  something  frightful  that  I  had  sacrificed 
sleep,  repose,  and  health  for  the  sake  of  a  girl  who  was 
pleased  to  consider  me  a  babe,  and  to  imagine  herself,  with 
respect  to  me,  something  very  like  a  nurse." 

Poor  Goethe  !  but  many  a  man  since  has  fallen  in  love 
with  a  woman  older  than  himself,  and  has  afterward  felt 
himself  fortunate  if  he  has  been  treated  as  Goethe  was. 
The  real  unfortunates  are  the  ones  who  have  been  for 
some  reason  encouraged  in  their  passion,  and  married 
by  these  mature  women  while  mere  boys.  Taking  into 
consideration  the  welfare  of  both  parties,  there  is  scarcely 
a  more  unfortunate  occurrence  in  life  than  such  a  mar- 
riage. Soon  after  this  first  love  episode  Goethe  went  up 
to  Leipsic  to  enter  the  University.  He  was  sixteen  years 
old,  well-favored  by  nature,  even  handsome,  and  full  of 
sensibility  and  enthusiasm.  But  he  appeared  to  the  in- 
habitants of  Leipsic  like  a  being  from  another  world,  on 
account  of  the  grotesqueness  of  his  costume.  His  father, 
who  was  of  an  economical  turn  of  mind,  always  bought 
his  own  cloth,  and  had  his  servants  make  the  clothing  for 
the  family.  He  usually  bought  good  but  old-fashioned 
materials,  and  trimmings  from  some  forgotten  epoch  in 
the  world's  history.  These  trimmings,  of  the  Paleozoic 
period  or  some  still  remoter  date,  together  with  the  un- 
professional and  antiquated  cut  of  the  garments,  made 
up  such  a  grotesque  appearance  that  Goethe  was  re- 
ceived with  undisguised  mirth  wherever  he  went  in  Leip- 
sic, until  he  discovered  what  was  the  matter  with  his 
dress.  He  had  not  been  noticed  at  home  on  this  ac- 
count, and  he  thought  himself  very  well  dressed  when 
he  first  arrived  in  the  city;  but  his  chagrin  and  morti- 


GOETHE,  13 

fication  knew  no  bounds  when  he  discovered  how  he 
had  been  laughed  at.  It  was  not  until  he  had  visited  the 
theatre  and  seen  a  favorite  actor  throw  the  audience  into 
convulsions  of  laughter  by  appearing  in  a  costume  almost 
identical  with  his  own,  that  he  begun  to  suspect  that  he 
was  ill-dressed.  He  went  out  and  sacrificed  his  entire 
wardrobe,  in  the  first  tumult  of  his  feelings,  remorselessly 
leaving  no  vestige  of  it  remaining,  and  supplying  himself 
with  a  complete  new  outfit,  not  so  ample  as  the  old  but 
much  more  satisfactory.  In  this  act  also  he  will  find 
many  sympathizers.  Few  things  are  recalled  with  more 
acute  mortification  than  the  outfit  in  which  people  leave 
their  early  homes,  if  they  are  in  the  country,  and  make 
their  first  visit  to  the  city.  Hundreds  of  men  groan  in 
spirit  as  they  bring  up  before  themselves  the  appearance 
they  presented  upon  that  momentous  day.  Compara- 
tively few  are  able  to  do  as  Goethe  did,  and  get  rid  of 
the  whole  vile  accoutrement  at  one  stroke.  The  majority 
are  obliged,  suffer  as  they  may,  to  wear  the  obnoxious 
garments  long  after  they  have  discovered  their  true  char- 
acter. When  Goethe  had  clothed  himself  anew  he  was 
received  with  more  favor  at  his  boarding-house,  and  pro- 
ceeded immediately  to  fall  in  love  with  the  landlady's 
daughter.  The  thought  of  Gretchen  was  buried  away 
out  of  sight,  and  the  thought  of  Annette  filled  his  whole 
heart.  This  Annette  was  young,  handsome,  sprightly, 
loving,  and  agreeable  \  and  he  saw  her  daily  in  the  most 
unrestrained  manner. 
He  says  of  her  :  — 

'*But  since  such  connections,  the  more  innocent  they  are, 
afford  the  less  variety  in  the  long  run,  I  was  seized  with  that 
wicked  distemper  which  seduces  us  to  derive  amusement 
from  the  torment  of  a  beloved  one,  and  to  domineer  over  a 
girl's  devotedness  with  wanton  and  tyrannical  caprice.  By 
unfounded  and  absurd  fits  of  jealousy  I  destroyed  our  most 
delightful  days,  both  for  myself  and  her.  She  endured  it 
for  a  time  with  incredible  patience,  which  I  was  cruel  enough 
to  try  to  its  utmost.     But  to  my  shame  and  despair,  I  was 


14  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

at  last  forced  to  remark  that  her  heart  was  alienated  from 
me,  and  that  I  might  now  have  good  ground  for  the  madness 
in  which  I  had  indulged  without  necessity  and  without  cause. 
There  were  terrible  scenes  between  us,  in  which  I  gained 
nothing ;  and  I  then  first  felt  that  I  had  truly  loved  her,  and 
could  not  bear  to  lose  her.  My  passion  grew  and  assumed 
all  the  forms  of  which  it  is  capable  under  the  circumstances ;  i 
nay,  I  at  last  took  up  the  role  which  the  girl  had  hitherto 
played.  I  sought  everything  possible  in  order  to  be  agree- 
able to  her,  even  to  procure  her  pleasure  by  means  of  others  ; 
for  I  could  not  renounce  the  hope  of  winning  her  again. 
But  it  was  too  late.  I  had  lost  her  really  ;  and  the  frenzy 
with  which  I  revenged  my  fault  upon  myself,  by  assaulting 
in  various  frantic  ways  my  physical  nature,  in  order  to  inflict 
some  hurt  on  my  moral  nature,  contributed  very  much  to  the 
bodily  maladies  under  which  I  lost  some  of  the  best  years 
of  my  life  :  indeed,  I  should  perchance  have  been  completely 
ruined  by  this  loss,  had  not  my  poetic  talent  here  shown 
itself  particularly  helpful  with  its  healing  power." 

His  next  adventure  was  with  the  daughters  of  his  dan- 
cing-master, both  of  whom  seemed  inclined  to  draw  un- 
warranted conclusions  from  the  freedom  of  his  intercourse 
with  them.  The  closing  scene  of  this  little  drama  must 
be  given  in  Goethe's  own  words  :  — 

"  Emilia  was  silent,  and  had  sat  down  by  her  sister,  who 
became  constantly  more  and  more  excited  in  her  discourse, 
and  let  certain  private  matters  slip  out  which  it  was  not 
exactly  proper  for  me  to  know.  Emilia,  on  the  other  hand, 
who  was  trying  to  pacify  her  sister,  made  me  a  sign  from 
behind  to  withdraw  ;  but  as  jealousy  and  suspicion  see  with 
a  thousand  eyes,  Lucinda  seemed  to  have  noticed  this  also. 
She  sprang  up  and  advanced  to  me,  but  not  with  vehemence. 
She  stood  before  me  and  seemed  to  be  thinking  of  some- 
thing. Then  she  said,  '  I  know  that  I  have  lost  you  ;  I 
make  no  further  pretensions  to  you.  But  neither  shall  you 
have  him,  sister.'  So  saying,  she  took  a  thorough  hold  of 
my  head,  thrusting  both  her  hands  into  my  locks  and  press- 
ing my  face  to  hers,  and  kissed  me  repeatedly  on  the  mouth. 
*  Now,'  cried  she,  'fear  my  curse  !  Woe  upon  woe,  for  ever 
and  ever,  to  her  who  kisses  these  lips  for  the  first  time 


GOETHE. 


15 


after  me  !  Dare  to  have  anything  more  to  do  with  him!  I 
know  Heaven  hears  me  this  time.  And  you,  sir,  hasten 
now,  hasten  away  as  fast  as  you  can.'  I  flew  down  the 
stairs,  with  a  firm  determination  never  again  to  enter  the 
house." 

This  conclusion,  though  doubtless  very  trying  to  an 
ardent  young  man  who  enjoyed  the  adoration  of  women, 
seems  to  have  been  an  eminently  wise  one  under  the  cir- 
cumstances, and  we  believe  the  resolve  was  faithfully 
kept.  The  dramatic  Lucinda  appears  no  more  in  his 
reminiscences. 

Quite  different  was  the  next  occupant  of  his  heart. 
Frederika  was  the  daughter  of  a  country  clergyman  whom 
Goethe  was  taken  to  visit  by  his  friend  Weyland.  The  hos- 
pitality and  agreeableness  of  the  family  had  been  highly 
praised  by  this  friend,  also  the  beauty  and  charms  of  the 
daughters.  And  indeed  this  Frederika  does  seem  to  have 
been  a  most  beautiful  and  charming  girl.  Goethe  con- 
stantly compares  the  family  to  that  of  the  Vicar  of  Wake- 
field, and  the  daughters  to  Olivia  and  Sophia.  The 
affection  which  Goethe  conceived  for  this  beautiful  and 
innocent  maiden  was  one  of  the  strongest  and  most  en- 
during of  his  life,  and  even  on  into  old  age  he  was  fond 
of  talking  of  her  and  their  youthful  romance.  Why  he 
ever  left  Frederika  at  all  has  never  been  made  clear,  for 
it  is  plain  that  at  last  he  truly  loved,  —  the  other  pas- 
sions being  mere  boyish  episodes,  soon  forgotten,  while 
this  one  exerted  a  lasting  influence  upon  his  life.  He 
writes  :  — 

"  Frederika's  answer  to  my  farewell  letter  rent  my  heart. 
It  was  the  same  hand,  the  same  tone  of  thought,  the  same 
feeling,  which  had  formed  itself  for  me  and  by  me.  I  now 
for  the  first  time  felt  the  loss  which  she  suffered,  and  saw  no 
means  to  supply  it,  or  even  to  alleviate  it.  She  was  com- 
pletely present  to  me  ;  I  always  felt  that  she  was  wanting  to 
me  ;  and  what  was  worst  of  all,  I  could  not  forgive  myself 
for  my  own  misfortune.  Gretchen  had  been  taken  away 
from  me,  Annette  had  left  me ;  now  for  the  first  time  I  was 


1 6  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

guilty.  I  had  wounded  the  most  lovely  heart  to  its  very 
depths ;  and  the  period  of  a  gloomy  repentance,  with  the 
absence  of  a  refreshing  love  to  which  I  had  grown  accus- 
tomed, was  most  agonizing,  nay,  insupportable." 

Even  after  eight  years  he  revisits  Frederika,  with  much 
of  the  old  feehng  still  alive,  although  he  had  in  the  mean 
time  had  at  least  two  new  loves.  One  of  these  was  the 
Charlotte  immortaHzed  in  "  Werther."  She  was  already 
engaged  when  he  made  her  acquaintance,  but  this  did 
not  preclude  the  possibihty  of  his  devoting  himself  assidu- 
ously to  her,  and  her  betrothed  seems  to  have  laid  no 
obstacles  in  the  way.  She  was  married  in  due  time,  and 
read  "  Werther  "  after  its  publication,  not  seeming  to  ob- 
ject to  the  part  she  is  there  made  to  play.  She  retained 
her  friendship  for  Goethe  throughout  life ;  and  to  her 
husband  the  poet  wrote  many,  many  years  after :  "  God 
bless  you,  dear  Kustner,  and  tell  Lottie  that  I  often  be- 
lieve I  can  forget  her,  but  then  I  have  a  relapse,  and  it  is 
worse  with  me  than  ever." 

Immediately  following  his  infatuation  with  Lottie  came 
the  connection  with  Lili,  which  reconciled  him  to  Lottie's 
marriage.  It  was  of  Lottie  that  he  said,  in  the  language 
of  "  The  New  Heloise,"  "  And  sitting  at  the  feet  of  his 
beloved,  he  will  break  hemp ;  and  he  will  wish  to  break 
hemp  to-day,  to-morrow,  and  the  day  after,  —  nay,  for 
his  whole  Hfe."  Whether  he  would  have  been  as  willing 
to  break  hemp  with  LiU  we  are  not  told ;  but  he  wrote  a 
great  deal  of  poetry  addressed  to  her,  —  more  perhaps 
than  to  any  of  his  other  loves,  —  much  of  which  he  re- 
produces in  the  "  Autobiography." 

"  Heart,  my  heart,  oh,  what  hath  changed  thee  ? 

What  doth  weigh  on  thee  so  sore  ? 
What  hath  thus  from  me  estranged  thee, 

That  I  know  thee  now  no  more  ? 
Gone  is  all  which  once  seemed  dearest, 
Gone  the  care  which  once  was  nearest, 
Gone  thy  toils  and  tranquil  bliss  ! 
Ah  !  how  could'st  thou  come  to  this  ? 


GOETHE.  ly 

"  Does  that  bloom,  so  fresh  and  youthful, 

That  divine  and  lovely  form, 
That  sweet  look,  so  good  and  truthful, 

Bind  thee  with  unbounded  charm  ? 
If  I  swear  no  more  to  see  her, 
If  I  man  myself  to  flee  her, 
Soon  I  find  my  efforts  vain, 
Back  to  her  I  'm  led  again." 

But  even  this  love  affair,  which  went  as  far  as  a  be- 
trothal, came  to  nothing,  —  Goethe  drawing  back  at  the 
last  through  a  pretended  or  real  fear  that  he  could  not 
support  the  lady  in  the  style  she  had  been  accustomed 
to  ;  though  it  is  more  reasonable  to  believe  that  his  usual 
repugnance  to  marriage  overcame  all  the  fervor  of  his  love, 
and  made  him  feel  a  real  relief  when  the  whole  affair  was 
over.  This  was  just  previous  to  his  removal  to  Weimar 
at  the  invitation  of  Carl  August,  and  it  was  there  that  the 
remainder  of  his  life-drama  was  enacted. 

Soon  after  his  arrival  there  he  made  the  acquaintance 
of  the  Frau  Von  Stein.  She  was  the  wife  of  the  Master 
of  Horse  at  Weimar,  and  Goethe,  who  had  now  passed 
thirty  years  of  age,  for  the  first  time  loved  a  mature 
woman.  She  was  the  mother  of  seven  children  and  was 
thirty-three  years  old.  With  moral  deficiencies  which 
were  securely  covered  up,  she  was  a  thoroughly  charming 
wbman,  and  retained  her  charm  even  to  old  age.  She 
was  said  to  have  remarked  when  asked  if  she  would  be 
presented  to  Goethe,  "  With  all  my  heart.  I  have  heard 
as  much  about  him  as  I  ever  did  about  Heaven,  and  I 
feel  a  deal  more  curiosity  about  him."  She  completely 
ensnared  his  heart,  and  held  it  in  undisputed  sway  for 
more  than  ten  years ;  which,  considering  his  proverbial 
inconstancy,  speaks  very  highly  for  her  charms. 

The  connection  was  well  known  and  perfectly  under- 
stood at  Weimar,  and  appears  to  have  caused  no  scandal. 
The  love  on  Goethe's  part  seemed  to  have  begun  even 
before  seeing  her ;  as  it  is  recorded  that  at  Pyrmont  he 
first  saw  her  portrait,  and  was  three  nights  sleepless  in 
consequence.     And  when  he  came  to  see  her,  instead  of 

2 


1 8  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

a  raw  girl  such  as  he  had  hitherto  fancied,  he  found  an 
elegant  woman  of  the  world,  whose  culture  and  experi- 
ence had  a  singular  fascination  for  him,  tired  as  he  was 
of  immaturity  and  overfondness.  She  sang  well,  played 
well,  sketched  well,  talked  well,  and  showed  her  appre- 
ciation of  the  poet,  not  like  a  gushing  girl,  but  with  the 
deHcate  tact  of  a  woman  of  the  world.  Some  years  after 
her  first  acquaintance  with  Goethe,  Schiller  thus  writes  to 
his  friend  Komer  :  — 

"  She  is  really  a  genuinely  interesting  person,  and  I  quite 
understand  what  has  attached  Goethe  to  her.  Beautiful  she 
can  nev'er  have  been,  but  her  countenance  has  a  soft  earnest- 
ness and  a  quite  peculiar  openness.  A  healthy  understand- 
ing, truth,  and  feeling  lie  in  her  nature.  She  has  more 
than  a  thousand  letters  from  Goethe,  and  from  Italy  he 
writes  her  every  week.  They  say  the  connection  is  perfectly 
pure  and  blameless." 

Even  before  he  went  away  from  Weimar  at  all,  the 
letters  were  incessant,  often  trivial,  and  sometimes  made 
up  of  homely  details  of  eating  and  drinking,  but  loving 
always.  The  reader  who  remembers  Charlotte  cutting 
bread  and  butter  will  not  be  shocked  at  the  poet  elo- 
quently begging  his  true  love  to  send  him  a  sausage.  All 
the  years  of  his  life  in  the  Gartenhaus  are  intimately 
associated  with  her.  The  whole  spot  speaks  of  her.  She 
was  doubtless  the  grand  passion  of  his  life.  But  even 
this  wore  itself  out,  and  after  his  absence  in  Italy  he 
never  seemed  to  feel  the  full  ardor  of  his  former  love. 
He  returned  to  Weimar  still  grateful  to  her  for  the 
happiness  she  had  given,  still  feeling  for  her  a  sincere 
affection,  but  retaining  little  of  the  passion  which  for  ten 
years  she  had  inspired.  The  feeling  seemed  to  have  died 
a  natural  death.  It  is  not  recorded  that  she  had  ever 
really  shared  his  fervor,  but  she  greatly  resented  his 
defection,  and  considered  him  ungrateful  and  disloyal  to 
the  end. 

It  was  about  this  time  that  he  first  made  the  acquain- 
tance of  Christine  Vulpius,  who  afterwards   became  hi? 


GOETHE. 


19 


wife.  She  was  the  daughter  of  one  of  those  men  whose 
drunkenness  slowlj'  but  surely  brings  a  whole  family  to 
want.  She  was  at  this  time  very  young.  He  thought 
her  beautiful,  and,  although  uneducated,  she  had  a  quick 
wit,  a  lively  spirit,  a  loving  heart,  and  great  aptitude  for 
domestic  duties.  She  had  no  social  position,  and  is 
often  spoken  of  as  his  servant.  Although  never  really 
occupying  that  position,  her  standing  was  not  much 
above  that  plane.  She  fascinated  Goethe  as  so  many 
young  faces  had  done  before,  and  it  seemed  to  be  a 
thraldom  of  the  mind  as  well  as  of  the  senses.  There 
are  few  poems  in  any  language  which  approach  the 
passionate  gratitude  of  those  in  which  he  recalls  the 
happiness  she  gave  him. 

George  Henry  Lewes  in  his  life  of  the  poet  has  this 
passage,  which  will  be  read  with  peculiar  interest,  con- 
sidering his  own  relations  with  the  highest  genius  of  her 
day,  George  EKot.     He  says  :  — 

"  Why  did  he  not  marry  her  at  once  ?  His  dread  of  mar- 
riage has  already  been  shown  ;  and  to  this  abstract  dread 
must  be  added  the  great  disparity  of  station,  — a  disparity  so 
great  that  it  not  only  made  the  liaison  scandalous,  but  made 
Christine  herself  reject  the  offer  of  marriage.  There  are 
persons  now  living  who  have  heard  her  declare  that  it  was 
her  own  fault  that  the  marriage  was  so  long  delayed.  And 
certain  it  is  that  when  she  bore  him  a  child,  he  took  her, 
with  her  mother  and  sister,  to  live  in  his  house,  and  always 
regarded  the  connection  as  marriage.  But,  however  he  may 
have  regarded  it.  public  opinion  has  not  forgiven  this  defi- 
ance of  its  social  laws.  The  world  blamed  him  loudly  ;  even 
his  admirers  cannot  think  of  the  connection  without  pain. 
But  let  us  be  just.  While  no  one  can  refrain  from  deploring 
that  Goethe,  so  eminently  needing  a  pure  domestic  life, 
should  not  have  found  a  wife  whom  he  could  avow,  no  one 
who  knows  the  circumstances  can  refrain  from  confessing 
that  there  is  also  a  bright  light  to  this  dark  episode." 

He  goes  on  to  say  :  — 

"  The  judgments  of  men  are  curious.  No  action  in 
Goethe's  life  has  excited  more  scandal  than  his  final  mar- 


20  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREA  T  A  UTHORS. 

riage  with  Christine.  It  is  thought  disgraceful  enough  for 
him  to  have  taken  her  into  his  home,  but  for  the  great  poet 
to  actually  complete  such  an  enormity  as  to  crown  his  con- 
nection with  her  by  marriage  was,  indeed,  more  than  society 
could  tolerate.  I  have  already  expressed  my  opinion  of 
this  unfortunate  connection,  but  I  most  emphatically  declare 
my  belief  that  the  redeeming  point  in  it  is  precisely  this 
which  caused  the  scandal.  Better  far  had  there  been  no 
connection  at  all ;  but  if  it  was  to  be,  the  nearer  it  ap- 
proached real  marriage,  and  the  further  it  was  removed 
from  a  fugitive  indulgence,  the  more  moral  and  healthy  it 
became." 

He  was  in  his  fifty-eighth  year  when  he  married  her. 
She  had  changed  much  in  the  passing  years.  From  the 
bright,  lively,  pleasure-loving  girl,  she  had  grown  into  a 
coarse  and  almost  repulsive  woman.  Her  father,  as  we 
know,  had  ruined  himself  by  intemperance,  her  brother 
also,  and  she  herself  had  not  escaped  the  fatal  appetite. 
She  was  not  restrained  by  the  checks  which  refined  society 
imposes,  for  in  Weimar  she  had  no  society,  and  as  the 
years  went  by  she  became  openly  and  shamelessly  given 
over  to  intemperance.  This  tragedy  in  Goethe's  life 
would  have  been  little  suspected  by  those  who  saw  how 
calmly  he  bore  himself  in  public.  The  mere  mention  of 
the  fact,  however,  tells  its  own  tale  of  humiliation  and 
woe.  It  is  often  asked  why  Goethe  did  not  part  from 
her  at  once.  In  answer  we  might  ask.  Why  do  not 
all  the  noble  and  right-principled  women  who  wear  out 
wretched  lives  as  drunkards'  wives  part  at  once  from  their 
debauched  husbands?  The  answer  would  no  doubt 
be  similar  in  the  two  cases.  He  was  too  weak  to 
alter  his  position,  he  was  strong  enough  to  bear  it.  And 
he  did  bear  it  to  the  bitter  end.  And  when  that  end 
came  he  mourned  for  her  with  sincere  affection.  Says 
Lewes  :  — 

"  She  who  had  for  twenty-eight  years  loved  and  aided  him ; 
who,  whatever  her  faults,  had  been  to  him  what  no  other 
woman  had  been,  could  not  be  taken  from  him  without  his 


GOETHE.  21 

feeling  her  loss.  His  self-mastery  was  utterly  shaken. 
He  knelt  by  her  bedside,  taking  her  cold  hands  in  his, 
and  exclaiming,  '  Thou  wilt  not  forsake  me,  thou  must 
not  forsake  me,'  and  sobbing  aloud.  He  had  been  to  her 
the  most  tender  of  devoted  husbands  throughout  all  those 
weary  years." 

Many  accounts  of  her  vulgarity  and  repulsiveness  have 
been  circulated ;  but  in  making  up  our  estimate  of  her, 
the  fact  that  she  held  Goethe  in  loyal  bonds  for  eight  and 
twenty  years  must  not  be  passed  over  lightly.  Fickle  as 
he  was  in  youth,  and  admiring  as  he  did  brilHant  women 
in  his  manhood,  Christine  Vulpius  must  have  had  charms, 
and  not  of  a  light  order,  to  have  held  him  thus  her  will- 
ing slave.  No  mere  fat  and  vulgar  Frau  without  mind  or 
sensibihty  could  have  done  this.  It  is  not  in  the  nature 
of  things.  We  often  see  men  of  brilliant  minds  in  our 
own  day  choosing  to  marry  women  who  are  not  intellec- 
tual or  cultured,  —  women  w^ho  have  only  beauty,  or  style 
and  social  elegance ;  but  they  are  women  who  have 
some  charm,  and  if  the  charm  remains,  the  attraction 
holds  indefinitely.  But  sad  indeed  is  the  case  of  the  man 
of  mind  who  has  married  a  mere  doll,  and  who,  w^hen 
youth  has  flown,  finds  he  has  a  wife  who  is  not  capable 
of  being  companion  or  friend  to  him.  Many  a  man 
holds  himself  steadfast  to  duty  under  these  circumstances 
through  a  long  Ufe,  but  if  the  woman  whom  his  maturity 
would  have  chosen  —  the  sweet,  companionable  woman, 
with  a  mind  that  can  sympathize  with  and  appreciate  his 
own  —  chances  to  dawn  upon  him,  too  late,  there  is  apt 
to  be  a  struggle  which  is  long  and  hard. 

Indeed,  it  is  never  the  part  of  wisdom  for  the  intellec- 
tual man  or  woman  to  marry  one  who  is  consciously  an 
inferior.  He  or  she  who  does  this  makes  a  high  bid  for 
an  unhappy  Hfe.  As  regards  Christine  Vulpius,  it  is  cer- 
tain that,  although  not  an  intellectual  woman,  she  was  not 
without  some  taste  for  pursuits  in  consonance  with  those 
of  Goethe.  It  was  for  her  that  he  wrote  the  "  Metamorpho- 
ses of  Plants,"  and  in  her  company  he  pursued  his  optical 


22  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

and  botanical  researches.  Had  she  shown  no  compre- 
hension of  these  things,  assuredly  Goethe  would  never 
have  persisted  in  instructing  her  in  them.  It  was  for  her, 
too,  that  he  wrote  the  *^  Roman  Elegies,"  which  shows 
that  he  did  not  esteem  her  a  mere  drudge. 

Whatever  may  be  our  general  estimate  of  Goethe's 
character,  it  will  certainly  be  conceded  that  he  showed 
great  capacity  for  domestic  love  and  domestic  happiness 
in  continuing  loyal  for  so  many  years  to  one  who  degraded 
herself  as  did  Christine.  He  certainly  cannot  be  counted 
among  the  sons  of  genius  with  whom  it  is  found  difficult, 
almost  impossible  even,  to  live.  Rather  must  we  rank 
him  high  among  those  genial  and  warm-hearted  men  who 
love  too  much,  rather  than  too  little,  and  who  are  easily 
led  by  the  women  to  whom  they  give  their  devotion. 
Irregular  and  faulty,  even  immoral  as  he  was,  he  yet 
possessed  the  redeeming  domestic  virtues  in  a  large  de- 
gree. Away  beyond  his  seventieth  year  we  find  women 
still  madly  loving  him,  and  him  capable  of  reciprocating 
their  affections.  And  well  was  it  that  this  should  be  so, 
for  otherwise  he  would  have  stood  alone  and  friendless. 
One  by  one  the  companions  of  his  youth  and  his  manhood 
were  taken  from  him,  until,  upon  the  death  of  Carl  August, 
he  could  truthfully  exclaim,  "  Nothing  now  remains."  It 
was  well  that  the  end  drew  near. 

When  one  can  say,  "  Nothing  now  remains,"  it  is  surely 
time  for  the  angel  with  the  brazen  trumpet  to  proclaim, 
"  For  him  let  time  be  no  more." 

Lightly  let  the  silver  cord  be  loosed  and  the  golden 
bowl  broken,  rather  than  that  the  lonely  life  linger  on, 
with  its  eyes  fixed  only  on  the  past,  which  has  become 
but  a  dim  mirage  where  ghostly  figures  are  seen  walking 
but  from  which  all  warmth  and  light  have  fled.  Happy 
indeed  is  he  who,  when  the  allotted  years  have  been 
passed,  and  he  lingers  waiting  on  the  stage  for  the  signal 
which  shall  cause  the  curtain  to  fall  forever  on  his  little 
Hfe  drama,  has  something  which  to  him  is  real  and  tangi- 
ble to  look  forward  to  in  the  near  future.     The  bitterness 


GOETHE.  23 

of  a  lingering  death  must  be  in  all  old  age  without  this 
hope. 

Let  us  trust  that  after  that  last  low  cry  of  Goethe  for 
"more  light,"  the  morning  dawned  upon  the  great  in- 
tellect and  great  heart  which  had  been  watching  for  it  so 
long.  Let  us  hope,  also,  that  the  world  may  yet  learn 
to  see  him  as  did  Emerson,  who  found  him  "  a  piece  of 
pure  nature,  like  an  oak  or  an  apple,  large  as  morning 
or  night,  and  virtuous  as  a  brier-rose." 


ROBERT   BURNS. 


"  Oh,  ye  wha  are  sae  guid  yoursel', 

Sae  pious  and  sae  holy, 
Ye  've  nought  to  do  but  mark  and  tell 

Your  neebors'  fauts  and  folly,  — 
Whase  life  is  like  a  weel-gaun  mill, 

Supplied  wi'  store  o'  water. 
The  heaped  happer  's  ebbing  still, 

And  still  the  clap  plays  clatter,  — 

"  Hear  me,  ye  venerable  core. 

As  counsel  for  poor  mortals. 
That  frequent  pass  douce  Wisdom's  door 

For  glaikit  Folly's  portals  ! 
I,  for  their  thoughtless,  careless  sakes. 

Would  here  propone  defences. 
Their  donsie  tricks,  theh"  black  mistakes. 

Their  failings  and  mischances." 


ALAS  for  it !  we  must  all  say,  in  dwelling  upon  the  life 
of  poor  Burns,  that  he  so  frequently  needed  to 
appear  as  counsel  for  poor  mortals  —  in  his  own  behoof; 
and  that  "  their  donsie  tricks,  their  black  mistakes, 
their  failings  and  mischances "  should  form  so  large  a 
portion  of  the  record  of  that  life,  which  under  other 
circumstances  might  have  been  one  of  the  most  brilliant 
and  beautiful  of  all  in  the  annals  of  genius.  For  Burns, 
although  born  to  such  a  lowly  life,  and  having  in  his 
youth  so  few  advantages  of  education  or  general  culture, 
might  by  sheer  force  of  genius  have  attained  as  proud  a 
position  as  any  man  of  his  time,  had  he  but  learned  to 


ROBERT  BURNS. 


25 


rule  over  himself  in  his  youth,  and  not  given  full  rein  to 
those  passions  which  his  "veins  convulsed,"  and  which 
"  still  eternal  galloped."  _,_        ,        ^^-- 
Could  he  but  have  governed  himself — 

"  When  social  life  and  glee  sat  down 
All  joyous  and  unthinking, 
Till,  quite  transmogrify' d,  they've  grown 
Debauchery  and  drinking,"  — 

there  would  have  been  a  far  different  story  to  have  told 
of  the  life  of  Robert  Burns. 

^-  What  ripe  fruits  of  his  genius  we  might  have  had, 
had  he  not  burned  out  the  torch  of  that  brilhant  in- 
tellect at  the  early  age  of  thirty-eight.  What  poems 
he  might  have  written  —  he  who  did  immortal  work 
with  all  his  drawbacks  —  had  he  kept  his  brain  clear 
and  his  hfe  sweet  even  for  the  short  span  of  life  allotted 
him  !  How  high  might  he  have  soared  in  the  years 
which  he  might  have  hoped  from  life,  had  he  but  moved 
at  a  slower  pace,  in  those  reckless  years,  the  record 
of  which  is  so  painful  to  the  great  world  of  admiring 
and  pitying  friends,  who  cherish  his  memory  so  ten- 
derly. Yet  there  is  in  his  case  everything  to  mitigate 
a  severe  judgment  upon  his  youthful  follies ;  and  the 
great  world  has  always  judged  him  leniently,  knowing 
the  story  of  his  early  life,  and  the  temptations  which  at 
that  day  must  have  surrounded  a  youth  of  his  tempera- 
ment among  the  peasants  of  Scotland.  Of  the  strength 
of  those  temptations  we  probably  can  form  but  a  slight 
idea. 

"  What 's  done  we  partly  may  compute. 
But  know  not  what 's  resisted." 

And  surely,  there  must  have  been  much  that  was 
worthy  of  honor  and  esteem,  even  of  reverence,  in  the 
heart  of  the  m.an,  to  have  brought  the  whole  world  to  his 
feet,  in  spite  of  the  faults  and  folHes  to  which  we  allude 
in   passing,  but  upon  which  we  have  no  disposition   to 


26  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREA  T  A  UTHORS. 

dwell.     As  a  friendly  hand  long  ago  wrote,  after  visiting  his 
poor,  mean  home  and  his  unhonored  burial  place  :  — 

"We  listened  readily  enough  to  this  paltry  gossip,  but 
found  that  it  robbed  the  poet's  memory  of  some  of  the  rever- 
ence that  was  its  due.  Indeed,  this  talk  over  his  grave  had 
very  much  the  same  effect  as  the  home-scene  of  his  life, 
which  we  had  been  visiting  just  previously.  Beholding  his 
poor,  mean  dwelling  and  its  surroundings,  and  picturing  his 
outward  life  and  earthly  manifestations  from  these,  one  does 
not  so  much  wonder  that  the  people  of  that  day  should  have 
failed  to  recognize  all  that  was  admirable  and  immortal  in  a 
disreputable,  drunken,  shabbily-clothed,  and  shabbily-housed 
man,  consorting  with  associates  of  damaged  character,  and 
as  his  only  ostensible  occupation  gauging  the  whiskey  which 
he  too  often  tasted.  Siding  with  Burns,  as  we  needs  must, 
in  his  plea  against  the  world,  let  us  try  to  do  the  world  a 
little  justice  too.  It  is  far  easier  to  know  and  honor  a  poet 
when  his  fame  has  taken  shape  in  the  spotlessness  of 
marble,  than  when  the  actual  man  comes  staggering  before 
you,  besmeared  with  the  sordid  stains  of  his  daily  life.  For 
my  part,  I  chiefly  wonder  that  his  recognition  dawned  as 
brightly  as  it  did  while  he  was  still  hving.  There  must 
have  been  something  very  grand  in  his  immediate  pres- 
ence, some  strangely  impressive  characteristic  in  his  nat- 
ural behavior,  to  have  caused  him  to  seem  iike  a  demigod 
so  soon." 

To  do  even  faintest  justice  to  the  memory  of  the  poet, 
we  must  go  to  Ayr,  and  look  upon  the  humble  cottage 
which  was  his  birthplace.  It  consisted  of  but  two  small 
rooms  paved  with  flag-stones,  and  with  but  one  window 
of  four  small  panes,  while  the  thatched  roof  formed  the 
only  ceiling.  The  whole  place  is  inconceivably  small  for 
the  dwelling  of  a  family,  for  there  is  not  even  an  attic- 
room,  or  any  other  spot  where  children  could  have  been 
hidden  away.  In  such  a  hut  as  this  it  is  hard  to  con- 
ceive of  a  family  being  reared  in  purity  and  delicacy, 
even  though  the  parents  should  have  done  their  best  by 
their  children,  and  been,  like  the  father  of  Bums,  prudent 
and  well-disposed. 


ROBERT  BURNS. 


27 


This  housing  of  the  poor  is  of  immense  moral  signifi- 
cance in  all  cases ;  and  it  is  growing  to  be  a  recognized 
fact  that  no  help  which  can  be  rendered  them  is  of  much 
avail,  when  they  are  left  in  these  Httle,  one  or  two  room 
dwellings. 

There  were  seven  children  in  the  Bums  household, 
and  during  the  childhood  of  Robert  the  family  were  very 
poor ;  and  he  and  his  brother  were  expected  to  do  the 
work  of  men,  at  the  age  of  thirteen.  He  had  some  school- 
ing before  that  age,  and  must  have  improved  his  time,  for 
he  could  read  and  spell  well,  and  had  some  knowledge 
of  English  grammar. 

Near  by  the  cottage  flows  the  beautiful  Bonny  Doon, 
through  deep  w^ooded  banks,  and  across  it  is  an  ancient 
ivy-covered  bridge  with  a  high  arch,  making  a  very  pict- 
uresque object  in  the  landscape,  which  is  one  of  great 
loveliness.  Kirk  Alloway  is  not  far  away,  —  the  smallest 
church  that  ever  filled  so  large  a  place  in  the  imagination 
of  the  world.  The  one-mullioned  window  in  the  eastern 
gable  might  have  been  seen  by  Tam  O'Shanter  blaz- 
ing with  devilish  light  as  he  approached  it  along  the  road 
from  Ayr,  and  there  is  a  small  square  one  on  the  side 
next  the  road  j  there  is  also  an  odd  kind  of  belfry,  almost 
the  smallest  ever  made,  with  a  little  bell  in  it,  —  and 
this  is  all.  But  no  grand  and  storied  cathedral  pile  in 
all  Europe  is  better  known,  and  to  no  shrine  of  famous 
minster  do  more  pilgrims  journey  than  to  this  wee  kirk 
immortalized  by  the  pen  of  Burns. 

The  father  of  Bums  has  been  thus  described  by  one 
who  knew  him  well :  — 

"  He  was  a  tender  and  affectionate  father;  he  took  pleasure 
in  leading  his  children  in  the  path  of  virtue,  not  in  driving 
them  as  some  parents  do  to  the  performance  of  duties  to 
which  they  are  themselves  averse.  He  took  care  to  find 
fault  but  seldom  ;  and  therefore  when  he  did  rebuke,  he  was 
listened  to  with  a  kind  of  reverential  awe.  A  look  of  disap- 
probation was  felt;  a  reproof  was  severely  so  ;  and  a  stripe 
even  on  the  skirt  of  the  coat,  gave  heartfelt  pain." 


28  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

He  was,  indeed,  a  frugal,  industrious,  and  good  man, 
and  his  wife  seems  to  have  been  a  woman  of  good  re- 
port ;  so  that  the  little  group  of  children,  in  spite  of 
their  poverty,  were  really  happily  situated  in  life,  com- 
pared with  many  of  their  neighbors.  There  was  always 
a  tinge  of  melancholy  in  Robert's  disposition,  however, 
and  in  his  earhest  youth  he  used  to  embody  it  in  verse. 
The  sensibility  of  genius  was  his  by  birthright,  and  the 
depressions  and  exaltations  of  spirit  which  marked  his 
later  Hfe  began  at  a  very  early  day.  He  himself  de- 
scribes his  earhest  years  thus  :  — 

*'  I  was  by  no  means  a  favorite  with  anybody.  I  was  a 
good  deal  noted  for  a  retentive  memory,  a  stubborn,  sturdy 
something  in  my  disposition,  and  an  enthusiastic,  idiot 
piety." 

Again  he  says  :  — 

"This  kind  of  Hfe  —  the  cheerless  gloom  of  a  hermit,  with 
the  unceasing  toil  of  a  galley-slave  —  brought  me  to  my  six- 
teenth year  ;  a  little  before  which  period  I  first  committed 
the  sin  of  rhyme." 

It  was  at  this  time  that  he  first  fell  in  love,  and  it  may 
be  added  that  after  this  he  was  never  out  of  that  interest- 
ing state.     He  says  :  — 

"My  scarcity  of  English  denies  me  the  power  of  doing 
her  justice  in  that  language ;  but  you  know  the  Scottish 
idiom,  —  she  was  a  bonnie,  sweet,  sonsie  lass.  In  short,  she, 
altogether  unwittingly  to  herself,  initiated  me  into  that  de- 
licious passion,  which  in  spite  of  acid  disappointment,  gin- 
horse  prudence,  and  book-worm  philosophy,  I  hold  to  be  the 
first  of  human  joys,  our  dearest  blessing  here  below  !  I  did 
not  know  myself  why  I  liked  so  much  to  loiter  behind 
with  her  when  returning  in  the  evening  from  our  labors  ; 
why  the  tones  of  her  voice  made  my  heartstrings  thrill  like 
an  ^olian  harp  ;  and  particularly,  why  my  pulse  beat  such  a 
furious  rattan,  when  I  looked  and  fingered  over  her  little 
hand  to  pick  out  the  cruel  nettle-stings  and  thistles.  Thus 
with  me  began  love  and  poetry,  which  at  times  have  been 


ROBERT  BURNS.  29 

my  only,  and  till  within  the  last  twelve  months,  have  been 
my  highest  enjoyment." 

To  a  later  period  than  this  belongs  the  episode  of 
Highland  Mary,  of  which  the 

"  Banks  and  braes  and  streams  around 
The  castle  of  Montgomery  " 

Still  whisper  to  the  lovers  of  Burns,  as  they  keep  a  solemn 
tryst  with  old-time  recollections  there. 

"  How  sweetly  bloomed  the  gay  green  birk, 

How  rich  the  hawthorn's  blossom, 
As  underneath  their  fragrant  shade 

I  clasped  her  to  my  bosom  ! 
The  golden  hours  on  angel  wings 

Flew  o'er  me  and  m,y  dearie  ; 
For  dear  to  me  as  light  and  life 

Was  my  sweet  Highland  Mary." 

It  was  the  sweetest  and  tenderest  romance  of  his  life ; 
and  it  is  with  unbidden  tears  that  the  world  still  remem- 
bers that  there 

"fell  death's  untimely  frost, 
That  nipt  my  flower  sae  early  ! 
Now  green  's  the  sod  and  cauld  's  the  clay 
That  \\Taps  my  Highland  Mary." 

After  a  hundred  years  there  are  still  hearts  that  take  a 
tender  interest  in  poor  Mary's  fate,  and  that  feel  for  poor 
Robbie  as  he  \vrote  :  — 

"  Oh,  pale,  pale  now  those  rosy  lips 

I  aft  hae  kissed  sae  fondly. 
And  closed  for  aye  the  sparkling  glance 

That  dwelt  on  me  sae  kindly  ! 
And  mouldering  now  in  silent  dust 

That  heart  that  lo'ed  me  dearly  ! 
But  still  within  my  bosom's  core 

Shall  live  my  Highland  Mary." 

In  the  monument  to  Burns,  near  his  old  home,  are 
deposited  the  two  volumes  of  the  httle  pocket  Bible 
which  Burns  gave  to  Mary  w^hen  they  pledged  their  faith 
to  one  another.     It  is  poorly  printed  on  coarse  paper. 


30  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREA  T  A  UTHORS. 

A  verse  of  Scripture  is  written  within  each  cover  by  the 
poet's  hand,  and  fastened  within  is  a  lock  of  Mary's  golden 
hair.  It  is  fitting  that  some  memorial  of  her  should  find 
a  place  in  that  splendid  monument  which  the  Scottish 
people  erected  to  his  memory,  after  his  life  of  poverty 
and  sorrow  had  been  brought  to  an  untimely  end. 

Burns  in  his  twenty-third  year  took  the  farm  at  Moss- 
giel,  where  he  first  became  acquainted  with  Jane  Armour. 
This  lady  was  the  daughter  of  a  respectable  mason  in  the 
village  of  Mauchline,  where  she  was  the  reigning  beauty 
and  belle.  It  was  almost  love  at  first  sight  upon  the  part 
of  both,  and  a  close  intimacy  soon  sprung  up  between 
them.  Burns  was  very  handsome  at  this  time,  gay  and 
fascinating  in  manners,  and  a  more  experienced  and  high- 
ly-placed woman  than  Jane  Armour  might  have  been 
excused  for  loving  the  wild  young  poet.  For  wild  he 
undoubtedly  was,  even  at  this  time,  —  so  much  so  that  her 
parents  objected  to  the  friendship.  He  was  nearly  six 
feet  high,  with  a  robust  yet  agile  frame,  a  finely  formed 
head,  and  an  uncommonly  interesting  countenance.  His 
eyes  were  large,  dark,  and  full  of  ardor  and  animation. 
His  conversation  was  full  of  wit  and  humor.  He  was 
very  proud,  and  would  be  under  pecuniary  obligation  to 
no  one.  He  was  also  verj'  generous  with  his  own  money. 
Of  the  first  five  hundred  pounds  which  he  received  for 
his  poems,  he  immediately  gave  t^vo  hundred  to  his 
brother  Gilbert  to  help  toward  the  support  of  their  mother  ; 
and  he  was  always  as  ready  to  share  whatever  sum  he  had 
with  those  he  loved. 

The  consequences  of  the  intimacy  between  the  poet 
and  Jane  Armour  were  soon  such  as  could  not  be  con- 
cealed, and  the  farm  having  been  a  disastrous  speculation 
in  the  hands  of  Burns,  he  was  not  in  a  situation  to  marry, 
although  extremely  anxious  to  do  so.  It  was  therefore 
agreed  upon  between  them  that  he  should  give  her  a  writ- 
ten acknowledgment  of  marriage,  and  then  sail  for  Jamaica, 
and  push  his  fortunes  there.  This  arrangement,  however, 
did  not  suit  the  lady's  father,  who  had  a  very  poor  opinion 


ROBERT  BURNS.  31 

of  Burns's  general  character,  and  he  prevailed  upon  Jane 
to  destroy  this  document.  Under  these  circumstances 
she  became  the  mother  of  twins,  and  great  scandal  fol- 
lowed Burns  even  to  Edinburgh,  where  he  had  been  in- 
duced to  stop  instead  of  sailing  for  Jamaica.  But  his 
poems,  which  he  succeeded  in  publishing  at  this  time, 
gave  him  a  name  and  some  money,  and  he  returned  to 
Mossgiel,  and  getting  her  father  to  consent,  married  Jane, 
and  moved  on  to  a  farm  six  miles  from  Dumfries.  He 
had  become  a  lion,  and  the  tables  of  the  neighboring 
gentry  were  soon  open  to  him,  as  the  houses  of  the  great 
had  been  in  Edinburgh.  Those  were  the  days  of  con- 
viviality, and  Burns  took  his  part  in  the  hilarity  of  the 
table,  soon  with  very  direful  consequences  to  himself  and 
his  family.  He  made  many  resolutions  of  amendment ; 
but  temperance  was  a  very  rare  virtue  in  those  days,  and 
Bums,  who  could  not  bear  it,  was  expected  to  drink  just  as 
much  as  those  who  could  bear  it,  and  who  could  afford  it. 
His  genius  suffered  from  this  irregular  hfe,  and  in  a  little 
while  he  was  not  capable  of  doing  justice  to  himself  in 
his  ^vritings ;  but  he  continued  to  be  good  company  at  table, 
and  to  be  invited  with  the  local  magnates,  long  after  he  had 
become  a  confirmed  drunkard.  The  farm  was  given  up,  and 
he  soon  depended  entirely  upon  his  seventy  pounds  a  year, 
the  pay  of  an  exciseman.  He  felt  his  degradation  very 
deeply,  and  had  fearful  struggles  with  his  temptation,  but 
was  always  overborne.  The  horrible  sufferings  of  genius 
in  such  thraldom  have  never  been  adequately  represented, 
nor  indeed  can  they  ever  be.  When  the  will  has  become  so 
enfeebled  that  no  real  resistance  can  be  made,  while  yet 
pride  and  kind-heartedness  survive,  the  agony  of  such  a 
man  is  appalling.  He  loves  his  family,  he  knows  better 
than  any  other  all  they  suffer  for  his  sake ;  he  determines 
a  thousand  times  to  reform,  only  to  find  himself  power- 
less to  do  so.  He  strives  with  more  than  the  heroism 
of  a  martyr  many  times,  but  he  is  beaten.  We  often 
blame  him  for  his  defeat,  but  there  comes  a  time  to 
such  a  man  when  defeat  is  inevitable.     Happy  he  who 


32  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

makes  his  manful  struggle  while  there  is  yet  time.  Poor 
Burns,  alas,  did  not.  He  went  from  bad  to  worse,  while 
his  wife  and  five  small  children  suffered  as  the  families 
of  such  men  always  suffer.  From  October,  1795,  to  the 
January  following,  an  accident  confined  him  to  his  house. 
A  few  days  after  he  began  to  go  out,  he  dined  at  a  tav- 
ern, and  returned  home  about  three  o'clock  of  a  very 
cold  morning,  benumbed  and  intoxicated.  This  was  fol- 
lowed by  rheumatism.  He  was  never  well  again,  though 
he  lived  until  the  end  of  June.  His  mind  during  all  this 
time  was  \vrung  with  the  most  poignant  agony  in  regard 
to  the  family  he  must  leave,  —  for  he  knew  he  should  not 
recover.  It  is  heart-rending  to  read  of  his  sufferings  and  re- 
morse, and  to  know  that  on  the  morning  of  her  husband's 
funeral  Mrs.  Burns  gave  birth  to  another  child.  It  is 
pleasant  to  learn  that  a  subscription  was  immediately 
taken  up  for  the  destitute  family,  which  placed  them  in 
comparative  comfort. 

"  Fight  who  will,"  says  Byron,  "  about  words  and  forms, 
Bums's  rank  is  in  the  first  class  of  his  art ;"  and  this  has 
long  been  the  deliberate  judgment  of  the  world.  No 
finer  flower  of  genius  than  that  of  Robert  Bums  has 
ever  blossomed,  and  it  will  be  long  before  the  world  will 
see  another  as  fair.  But,  as  Mr.  Lockhart  observes,  "To 
accumulate  all  that  has  been  said  of  Bums,  even  by  men 
like  himself,  of  the  first  order,  would  fill  a  volume."  Not 
even  the  most  carping  critic  has  ever  questioned  his 
genius.  The  "  Cotter's  Saturday  Night,"  and  "  Tam 
O'Shanter,"  and  "  Highland  Mary,"  would  stand  before 
the  world  to  refute  such  a  critic ;  and  it  would  be  a  ven- 
turesome man  indeed  who  would  care  to  contend  for 
such  a  proposition  as  that  Robert  Bums  was  not  a  great 
poet.  That  he  was  a  great  wit  is  also  as  well  established, 
and  that  he  might  have  been  a  great  master  of  prose  is 
equally  unquestionable.  That  he  was  great  in  his  Hfe  we 
dare  not  affirm,  but  that  his  life  has  a  great  claim  upon 
our  charity  we  will  gladly  allow.  Few  writers  have  been 
better  loved  than  he.     There  is  a  personal  warmth  in  all 


ROBERT  BURNS.  33 

that  he  wrote,  and  we  feel  that  we  knew  him  in  a  sort  of 
personal  way,  as  if  we  had  shaken  hands  with  him,  and 
heard  his  voice ;  and  we  always  have  a  feeling  that  he  is 
addressing  us  in  our  own  person.  All  of  the  many  pil- 
grims who  visit  the  places  he  made  immortal  have  some- 
thing of  this  feeling,  and  the  banks  of  Doon  are  as  classic 
now  as  the  lovely  Avon.  And  whenever  we  are  tempted 
to  look  upon  the  darker  sides  of  his  Ufe-picture,  we  may 
well  refrain,  and  repeat  his  words  :  — 

"  Then  gently  scan  your  brother  man, 

Still  gentler,  sister  woman  ; 
Though  they  may  gang  a  kennin'  wrang, 

To  step  aside  is  human  ; 
One  point  must  still  be  greatly  dark,  — 

The  moving  why  they  do  it ; 
And  just  as  lamely  can  ye  mark 

How  far  perhaps  they  rue  it." 


MADAME    DE   STAEL. 


THAT  must  indeed  have  been  a  thrilling  life  —  a  life 
of  startling  dramatic  interest  —  which  covered  the 
period  occupied  by  the  career  of  Madame  de  Stael,  even 
had  the  person  living  the  life  been  but  an  obscure  ob- 
server of  passing  events.  For  the  time  was  big  with  the 
most  astounding  things  the  world  has  known  in  these 
later  centuries.  But  to  a  person  like  the  daughter  of 
Necker,  with  intellect  to  comprehend  the  prodigious 
events,  and  with  the  power  oftentimes  to  influence  them 
to  a  greater  or  less  extent,  the  wonderful  drama  which 
was  then  enacted  upon  the  stage  of  France  must  have 
appeared  as  of  even  overwhelming  importance.  It  must 
have  dwarfed  individual  life,  until  one's  own  personal 
affairs,  if  they  would  press  upon  the  attention,  seemed 
impertinence,  to  be  disposed  of  as  quickly  as  possible, 
that  one  might  give  every  thought  and  every  emotion  to 
one's  country.  She  saw  the  commencement  and  the 
close  of  that  great  social  earthquake  which  overthrew  the 
oldest  dynasty  in  Europe ;  she  saw  the  rise,  the  culmi- 
nation, and  the  setting  of  Napoleon's  meteor-star;  she 
witnessed  the  return  of  the  Bourbons  after  their  long 
absence,  and  the  final  death  in  defeat  and  exile  of  her 
dreaded  enemy — the  great  soldier-Emperor — on  the 
rocky  ocean  isle.  This  series  of  events  is  not  to  be 
paralleled  for  magnitude  and  meaning  in  any  period  of 


MADAME  BE  STAEL.  35 

modern  time,  and  Madame  de  Stael  was  something  more 
than  a  spectator  during  much  of  the  great  miracle-play. 

Her  father,  Necker,  was  the  Controller-General  of 
Finances  under  Louis  XVI.,  and  a  man  worthy  of  honor 
and  long  remembrance,  although  he  was  called  during 
those  perilous  times  to  a  work  he  was  unable  to  do,  and 
which  perhaps  no  man  could  have  done.  The  corrupt 
and  meretricious  court  had  brought  France,  financially 
as  well  as  morally,  to  a  point  where  no  one  man,  had  he 
been  ever  so  great  and  so  noble,  could  save  her —  could 
even  retard  the  period  of  her  ruin.  Necker  made  a  noble 
struggle,  but  was  overborne  by  fate ;  and  had  his  genius 
been  even  more  commanding  than  it  was,  he  would 
doubtless  have  been  thus  overborne.  History  tells  us  of 
many  greater  statesmen  than  he,  but  of  few  better  men. 
Disinterested  almost  to  a  fault,  stainless  in  his  private 
character  as  well  as  unquestioned  in  his  public  integrity, 
truly  rehgious  in  a  time  given  over  to  atheism  and 
impiety,  conscientious  even  to  the  smallest  matters  in 
public  as  well  as  private  life,  and  moderate  when  every- 
thing about  him  was  in  extremes,  —  well  might  Madame 
de  Stael  be  proud  of  her  father,  and  fond  to  effusion  of 
his  memory. 

Her  mother  was  a  woman  to  be  held  in  reverent  re- 
membrance. She  was  both  beautiful  and  accomplished, 
possessed  of  fine  talents,  as  well  as  spotless  character. 
She  had  been  engaged  to  Gibbon  in  her  youth,  and  the 
attachment  between  them  was  a  strong  one.  But  the 
marriage  was  prevented  by  his  father ;  and,  after  a  long 
period  of  mournful  constancy,  she  married  M.  Necker, 
and  took  her  place  among  the  great  ones  of  the  earth. 
The  friendship  between  herself  and  Gibbon  was  afterwards 
very  tender  and  sacred,  although  she  was  a  faithful  and 
devoted  wife  to  Necker,  and  really  warmly  attached  to 
him.  Necker,  on  his  part,  was  her  worshipping  lover 
to  the  end  of  his  life. 

The  daughter  of  such  parents  could  scarcely  fail  to  be 
remarkable  in  some  way.     It  is  not  from  such  sources  that 


36 


HOME  LIFE   OF  GREA  T  A  UTHORS. 


the  mediocrities  are  recruited.  But  the  child  was  utterly 
unlike  her  parents,  and  never  showed  much  likeness  to 
either  in  after  life.  Her  genius  was  unquestioned  even 
from  her  precocious  babyhood,  and  she  was  the  wonder 
and  admiration  of  all  the  brilliant  circle  of  her  father's 
friends.  Her  temperament  was  most  vehement  and  im- 
pulsive, and  her  vivacity  a  wonder  even  to  the  Parisians. 
She  seemed  to  know  everything  by  intuition,  and  made 
light  of  the  hardest  tasks  which  could  be  given  her. 
The  streams  of  her  childish  eloquence  seemed  to  flow 
from  some  exhaustless  fountain.  The  celebrated  men 
who  were  her  father's  guests  were  never  weary  of  express- 
ing their  astonishment  at  her  powers  of  conversation. 

Gibbon,  the  Abbe  Raynal,  Baron  Grimm,  and  Marmon- 
tel  were  among  these  friends,  and  they  undoubtedly  did 
much  to  stimulate  the  childish  intellect,  although  Madame 
Necker,  troubled  at  the  precocity  of  her  darling,  frowned 
upon  all  attempts  to  unduly  excite  her  mind.  But  great 
themes  were  constantly  discussed  in  her  presence ;  the 
frivolity  of  the  old  regime  was  being  rapidly  displaced  by 
the  intense  earnestness  of  the  men  of  the  new  era,  and 
the  most  momentous  questions  of  life  and  death,  of  time 
and  eternity,  were  the  subjects  of  the  conversations  to 
which  the  young  genius  listened  with  such  rapt  attention. 
Doubtless  it  was  in  listening  to  these  profound  discussions 
in  her  earliest  years  that  she  acquired  that  confidence 
which  in  after  years  never  deserted  her,  but  which  always 
led  her  to  believe  that  she  could  save  both  her  country 
and  the  world,  if  people  would  only  let  her  manage  things 
in  her  own  way.  Charles  X.  used  to  tell  the  story  of  her 
calling  upon  him,  after  the  return  of  the  Bourbons  to 
France,  and  offering  him  a  constitution  ready-made,  and 
insisting  upon  his  accepting  it.     He  says  :  — 

"It  seemed  like  a  thing  resolved — an  event  decided 
upon,  —  this  proposal  of  inventing  a  constitution  for  us.  I 
kept  as  long  as  I  could  upon  the  defensive  ;  but  Madame 
de  Stael,  carried  away  by  her  zeal  and  enthusiasm,  instead 
of  speaking  of  what  presumably  concerned  herself,  knocked 


MADAME  DE  STAEL.  37 

me  about  with  arguments  and  crushed  me  with  threats  and 
menaces  ;  so,  tired  to  death  of  entertaining,  instead  of  a 
clever,  humble  woman,  a  roaring  politician  in  petticoats, 
I  finished  the  audience,  leaving  her  as  httle  satisfied  as  my- 
self with  the  interview." 

Perhaps  something  of  this  kind  may  have  influenced  Na- 
poleon in  banishing  her  from  the  Empire. 

Necker  himself  idoHzed  his  daughter,  and  was  naturally 
very  proud  of  her  youthful  triumphs,  while  she  in  turn 
made  him  her  one  hero  among  men.  Throughout  Hfe 
her  devotion  to  him  continued,  and  she  wrote  of  him  as 
one  might  write  of  a  god.  She  frequently  lamented  that 
he  had  been  her  father  and  not  one  of  her  own  gen- 
eration, that  there  might  have  been  a  man  of  her  time 
worthy  of  the  love  which  she  could  have  lavished  upon 
him.  The  fervor  of  this  devotion,  although  it  seems 
unnatural,  belonged  to  her  intensely  impulsive  tempera- 
ment, and  in  her  case  we  must  make  some  allowance  for 
the  excesses  of  her  passionate  expressions  of  affection. 
Although  she  talked  much  and  in  the  grandest  manner 
of  love,  even  when  young  and  unmarried,  —  which  is  a 
very  indelicate  thing  to  do  in  the  eyes  of  the  French,  — 
she  did  not  appear  to  have  any  youthful  romance  of  a 
serious  sort.  She  had  a  great  reputation  as  a  wit  and 
a  genius,  but  few  admirers  who  could  be  classed  as  lovers. 
Many  men  were  her  friends,  and  she  was  much  sought 
after ;  but  she  was  far  from  beautiful,  which  goes  a  great 
way  in  matters  of  the  heart,  and  many  disliked  the  man- 
ner in  which  she  trampled  upon  the  conventionalities, 
while  doubtless  many  others  objected  to  her  strong- 
mindedness  and  the  aggressiveness  of  her  opinions. 

She  made  a  marriage  de  convenance  at  the  age  of 
twenty,  apparently  without  much  thought  of  love  upon 
either  side,  and  entered  upon  her  new  career  with  all 
the  confidence  which  characterized  her.  Baron  de  Steal 
was  a  man  of  good  character  and  noble  birth,  an  attache 
of  the  Swedish  Embassy,  and,  as  she  had  money  enough 
for  both,  the  match  was  regarded  favorably  by  her  friends. 


38  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

Although  the  Baron  was  a  handsome  man  and  of  pleas- 
ing address,  one,  it  seems,  who  might  have  touched  a 
maiden's  heart.  Mademoiselle  Necker,  it  is  said,  never 
made  even  a  pretence  of  love,  but  took  the  whole  affair 
as  a  matter  of  business.  It  was  necessary  that  she  should 
be  married,  —  it  is  only  thus  that  French  women  achieve 
their  independence, —  and  this  man  would  do  as  well  as 
another ;  that  seemed  to  be  all  there  was  of  this  remark- 
able occurrence.  Remarkable  in  our  eyes,  but  of  the 
usual  sort  in  the  eyes  of  the  French.  For  domestic  hap- 
piness she  seemed  to  care  little.  The  excitement  of 
Parisian  society  was  her  heaven,  and  into  this  she  entered 
with  all  the  ardor  of  her  nature.  Her  marriage  had  given 
her  every  freedom,  although  it  does  not  appear  that  she 
was  much  restrained  before,  —  for  a  French  girl ;  and  she 
dashed  into  the  whirlpool  of  the  gayest  society  in  the 
world  with  a  sort  of  intoxication.  Her  vivacity  and  en- 
thusiasm knew  no  bounds,  and  she  held  her  own  little 
court  in  every  assembly,  at  which  the  envious  and  unno- 
ticed looked  askance.  She  was  regarded  as  a  dangerously 
fascinating  woman,  although  personally  she  was  so  entirely 
unattractive. 

For  three  years  she  enjoyed  her  triumphs  to  the  ut- 
most. Then  came  the  earthquake  which  dissolved  the 
fair  fabric  of  her  dreams.  The  Reign  of  Terror  began, 
and  Paris  was  in  the  wildest  ferment.  Of  course,  she 
was  in  the  very  midst  of  those  exciting  events,  and  her 
influence  was  of  moment  in  the  terrific  crisis.  Her  posi- 
tion gave  her  influence,  and  she  worked  with  all  the 
strength  and  enthusiasm  of  her  nature  to  aid  the  escape 
of  her  friends  and  to  succor  the  endangered.  All  the 
powers  of  her  remarkable  mind  were  put  into  active  ser- 
vice, and  she  seems  never  to  have  thought  of  herself. 
To  be  sure,  she  was  as  inviolable  as  any  one  could  be 
considered  in  that  fearful  time,  but  she  had  a  rare  courage 
and  unbounded  fortitude,  and  would  have  worked  as  she 
did  even  at  personal  hazard.  She  prevailed  upon  the 
ferocious  Revolutionists  to  show  mercy  in   some   cases 


MADAME  DE  STAEL.  39 

where  they  were  bound  to  have  blood.  She  concealed 
her  friends  and  even  strangers  in  her  house,  and  she  used 
all  the  powers  of  her  marvellous  eloquence  to  turn  the 
tide  of  revolution  backward.  But  it  was  in  vain.  Her 
father  was  deposed,  her  friends  were  murdered,  her  king 
was  slain,  all  of  her  society  were  under  surveillance,  she 
herself  everybody  thought  in  danger,  but  she  would  not 
leave  her  beloved  Paris.  Her  husband  was  in  Holland, 
and  thought  she  was  subjecting  her  children  to  needless 
peril ;  but  she  still  had  hope  that  somehow  she  might  be 
useful  to  her  country.  The  subhme  confidence  which 
she  had  in  her  own  powers  did  not  desert  her.  She  saw 
the  streets  flow  with  blood,  one  might  say,  —  for  the  mur- 
ders of  the  Revolutionists  were  of  daily  occurrence, — 
but  it  was  not  until  all  hope  of  being  of  use  was  gone 
that  she  took  her  children  to  England. 

Here  a  little  colony  of  French  exiles  were  already 
established,  and  she  became  at  once  the  centre  of  the 
group.  She  pined  in  the  exile  and  mourned  with  ever- 
increasing  sorrow  for  her  country.  Her  interest  in  the 
events  of  the  time  was  cruelly  intense,  and  burned  out 
her  life.  JM.  de  Narbonne,  whose  life  she  had  saved,  was 
one  of  her  consolations  in  the  dreadful  exile,  as  was  the 
friendship  of  Talleyrand  and  of  Benjamin  Constant. 

She  returned  to  France  after  quiet  was  restored,  and 
lived  in  Paris  something  after  the  old  way.  Then  came 
Napoleon,  whom  she  hated  with  all  the  ardor  of  her 
nature,  and  who  returned  her  hate  with  interest.  He 
banished  her  from  France,  and  would  not  permit  her 
return  during  his  entire  reign.  "  She  carries  a  quiver  full 
of  arrows,"  he  said,  ''which  would  hit  a  man  were  he  seated 
upon  a  rainbow."  It  was  a  purely  personal  dislike  on  his 
part,  and  a  piece  of  his  most  odious  despotism  to  allow  his 
personal  feelings  to  influence  him  in  such  a  matter.  There 
are  few  things  recorded  of  him  more  utterly  inexcusable 
than  this.  She  passed  fourteen  years  in  exile,  —  the  best 
years  of  her  life, —  and  exile  to  her  had  all  the  bitterness 
of  death ;  she  could  never  really  live  except  in  Paris.     We 


40 


HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 


hear  little  of  her  husband  during  all  this  time,  but  it  is  not 
likely  that  she  derived  much  consolation  from  domestic  Hfe. 
She  had  no  taste  for  it,  and  found  it  the  supreme  bore. 
She  consoled  herself  as  much  as  she  could  with  literature, 
and  wrote  those  books  which,  wonderful  and  brilliant  as 
they  are,  all  who  knew  her  personally  unite  in  saying,  never 
did  justice  to  her  genius.  The  gloom  of  exile  was  over 
them  all.  She  suffered  a  great  variety  of  petty  persecu- 
tions at  the  hands  of  Napoleon  during  all  those  years, 
and  these  added  to  the  inevitable  miseries  of  her  lot. 

After  the  fall  of  the  Napoleonic  empire  she  returned 
to  Paris,  and  there  passed  the  remainder  of  her  life.  It 
was  at  this  time  that  she  presented  the  constitution 
to  Charles  X.  She  was  never  remarkable  for  her  taste 
in  dress,  and  that  Prince  thus  describes  her  on  that 
occasion  :  — 

*'  She  wore  a  red  satin  gown  embroidered  with  flowers  of 
gold  and  silk,  a  profusion  of  diamonds,  rings  enough  to  stock 
a  pawnbroker's  shop  ;  and  I  must  add  that  I  never  before 
saw  so  low  cut  a  corsage  display  less  inviting  charms.  Upon 
her  head  was  a  large  turban,  constructed  on  the  pattern  of 
that  worn  by  the  Cumean  sybil,  which  put  the  finishing  touch 
to  a  costume  so  little  in  harmony  with  the  style  of  her  face. 
I  scarcely  can  understand  how  a  woman  of  genius  can  have 
such  a  false,  vulgar  taste." 

It  can  be  easily  comprehended  how  she  might  have 
bored  the  Prince  by  pressing  upon  him  at  such  length 
her  ideas  of  the  reconstruction  of  the  empire,  for  she 
often  bored  even  those  who  really  admired  and  appreci- 
ated her  by  the  torrents  of  her  talk.  She  was  not  witty, 
but  full  of  rhetorical  surprises,  and  had  boundless  stores 
of  information  upon  every  subject.  People  do  not  like 
to  be  instructed,  nor  do  they  like  to  be  preached  to,  even 
by  eloquent  lips,  and  her  great  conversational  powers 
often  made  her  dreaded  rather  than  admired  in  general 
society.  While  she  was  in  Germany  Goethe,  who  must 
be  allowed  the  capability  of  appreciating  her,  was  wont  to 


MADAME  DE  STAEL.  41 

run  away  from  her  whenever  he  could,  and  bore  up  under 
her  eloquence  with  rather  an  ill  grace  when  he  could  not 
escape  it.  Schiller  also,  in  whom  she  much  delighted, 
was  ungallant  enough  to  dislike  her  extremely.  On  the 
contrary,  Talleyrand  and  many  other  famous  Frenchmen 
seemed  never  to  weary  of  her,  and  have  handed  down 
the  tradition  of  her  wonderful  eloquence  to  a  later  gener- 
ation. It  is  probable  that  her  excessive  vivacity  was  more 
pleasing  to  the  French  mind  than  to  that  of  the  English 
and  Germans,  and  her  lack  of  repose  did  not  weary  them 
to  the  same  extent.  She  retained  her  friends  to  the  end 
of  her  life,  and  they  were  the  source  of  her  greatest  satis- 
faction. She  was  loyal  and  devoted  in  the  extreme  to  all 
whom  she  favored  with  her  friendship,  and  all  such  loved 
her  with  deep  affection.  Indeed,  it  may  be  said  that  hu- 
man nature  was  the  only  thing  w4iich  much  interested  her. 
She  had  no  love  for  Nature,  and  would  scarcely  take  the 
trouble  to  see  the  Alps  when  in  Switzerland,  and  said  that 
if  she  were  left  to  her  own  feehngs  she  would  not  open 
her  window  to  see  the  bay  of  Naples  for  the  first  time, 
but  that  she  would  travel  five  hundred  leagues  at  any 
time  to  see  a  great  man  she  had  not  met  before.  She 
cared  little  for  art,  and  not  much  for  literature  as  such, 
though  she  had  a  passion  for  ideas.  Her  ideal  Hfe  was 
a  life  of  intellectual  excitement,  —  constant  intercourse 
with  minds  of  her  own  order.  The  improvisations  of 
Corinne  give  one  a  little  idea  what  her  conversation  was 
like.  Still  she  has  been  quoted  as  saying  that  she  would 
have  exchanged  all  her  talent  for  the  one  gift  of  beauty 
which  was  denied  her. 

In  the  life  of  William  Cullen  Bryant  we  find  the  follow- 
ing passage  relating  to  Madame  de  Stael,  occurring  in  one 
of  his  letters  ;  it  gives  the  last  glimpse  that  we  get  of  the 
close  of  her  career,  and  is  interesting  also  as  showing  his 
estimate  of  a  great  but  faulty  woman.     He  says  :  — 

"  What  a  life  !  Passionate,  for  she  was  brought  up  not 
to  control  her  passions;  almost  always  unhappy;  marrying 
an  old  man  whom  she  did  not  care  for,  after  being  twice 


42 


HOME  LIFE   OF  GREA  T  A  UTHORS. 


refused  by  young  men  whom  she  did  love,  and  to  whom  she 
offered  herself,  if  not  formally  yet  in  a  manner  not  to  be  mis- 
understood ;  forming,  after  her  marriage,  intimate  relations 
with  Benjamin  Constant,  to  her  father's  great  grief ;  and 
when  he  deserted  her,  marrying,  after  her  husband's  death, 
a  half-dead  Itahan  named  Rocca ;  and  finally  wearing  out  her 
life  by  opium-eating." 

This  marriage  with  Albert  Jean-Michel  de  Rocca  took 
place  at  Geneva,  and  was  for  a  time  concealed  from  the 
world,  causing  some  scandal.  But  her  children  and  inti- 
mate friends  knew  of  it,  although  much  opposed  to  it. 
Rocca  was  a  young  Italian  officer,  just  returned  from  the 
war  in  Spain,  with  a  dangerous  wound.  He  was  of  a 
poetic  temperament  and  exceedingly  romantic,  and  fell 
violently  in  love  with  ^Madame  de  Stael,  although  she  was 
forty-five  years  old  and  he  but  tw^enty-three.  During  the 
years  of  her  first  marriage  she  used  to  say  that  she  would 
force  her  own  daughter  to  marry  for  love  if  that  were 
necessary,  and  it  is  supposed  that  at  last  she  herself  made 
a  marriage  of  real  affection.  Despite  the  disparity  of  their 
years,  they  seemed  to  be  really  happy  in  this  marriage, 
and  her  friends  were  at  last  reconciled  to  it.  But  her 
new-found  happiness  was  of  short  duration,  —  she  being 
but  fifty  years  old  at  the  time  of  her  death. 


WILLIAM   WORDSWORTH. 


MR.  SWINBURNE  quotes  the  following  passage 
from  a  description  given  by  one  of  the  daily 
papers  of  a  certain  murderer  who  at  the  time  was  attract- 
ing great  attention  in  London  :  — 

"  He  has  great  taste  for  poetry,  can  recite  long  passages 
from  popular  poets, —  Byron's  denunciations  of  the  pleasures 
of  the  world  having  for  him  great  attraction  as  a  description 
of  his  own  experiences.  Wordsworth  is  his  favorite  poet. 
He  confesses  himself  a  villain." 

At  this  day  the  two  latter  facts  will  not  necessarily  be 
supposed  to  have  any  logical  connection ;  but  there  was 
a  time  when  the  violence  of  the  opponents  of  W^ords- 
worth's  claim  to  be  a  poet  might  have  suggested  the  most 
intimate  relation  between  these  two  statements.  For 
many  years  he  was  looked  upon  as  an  "  inspired  idiot " 
by  a  large  part  of  the  reading  world ;  and  his  place  in 
hterature  has  not  been  definitely  settled  to  this  day. 
Such  extravagant  claims  have  always  been  made  for  him 
by  his  friends  that  they  have  called  forth  just  as  ex- 
travagant denunciations  from  those  who  do  not  admire 
his  works  ;  and  violent  controversies  arise  concerning  his 
merits  among  first-class  scholars  and  critics.  It  is  always 
noticeable,  however,  in  these  discussions  that  his  pane-' 
gyrists  always  quote  his  best  efforts,  those  subhme  pas- 
sages to  which  no  one  denies  transcendent  merit,  and 
that  his  opponents  never  get  much  beyond  ''  Peter  Bell," 
and  other  triviahties  and  absurdities,  which  his  best  friends 
must  admit  that  he  wrote  in  oreat  numbers.    That  his  best 


44  HOME  LIFE  OF  GREAT  AUTHORS^ 

work  ranks  next  to  Shakespeare,  Milton,  and  Shelley,  can 
scarcely  be  doubted  by  any  true  lover  of  poetry ;  and  he 
certainly  has  the  right  to  be  judged  by  his  best,  rather 
than  by  his  inferior  work. 

Wordsworth  was  born  in  1770,  in  Cumberland,  and 
received  his  early  education  there,  being  noted  for  his  ex- 
cellence in  classical  studies  and  for  his  thoughtful  disposi- 
tion. He  graduated  from  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge, 
and  immediately  after  began  his  literary  labors,  which 
were  continued  through  a  long  and  most  industrious  life. 

In  1803  he  married  Miss  Mary  Hutchinson  of  Pen- 
rith, and  settled  at  Grasmere,  in  Westmoreland,  where  he 
passed  the  remainder  of  his  hfe,  and  where  he  lies  buried 
in  the  little  churchyard  where  so  many  of  his  family  had 
preceded  him.  He  helped  to  make  the  Lake  district 
famous  the  world  over,  and  himself  never  wearied  of  its 
charms.  He  was  pre-eminently  the  poet  of  Nature,  and 
it  was  from  the  unrivalled  scenery  of  this  part  of  England 
that  he  caught  much  of  his  inspiration.  Mrs.  Words- 
worth, who  was  as  fond  of  it  as  her  husband,  used  to  say 
in  extreme  old  age,  that  the  worst  of  living  in  the  Lake 
region  was  that  it  made  one  unwilling  to  die  when  the 
time  came.  The  poet's  marriage  was  an  eminently  happy 
one,  although  Miss  Martineau  hints  that  it  was  not  first 
love  on  his  part,  but  that  the  lines,  "  She  was  a  phantom 
of  delight,"  so  often  quoted  as  relating  to  Mrs.  Words- 
worth, were  really  meant  to  indicate  another  person  who 
had  occupied  his  thoughts  at  an  early  day.  At  any  rate, 
he  did  address  the  following  lines  to  his  wife  after  thirty- 
six  years  of  married  life,  which  is  certainly  a  far  higher 
compliment  to  her  :  — 

"  Mom  into  noon  did  pass,  noon  into  eve, 
And  the  old  day  was  welcome  as  the  young, 
As  welcome,  and  as  beautiful,  —  in  sooth,  more  beautiful, 
As  being  a  thing  more  holy." 

The  other  poems,  "  Let  other  bards  of  angels  sing," 
and  "  Oh,  dearer  far  than  life  and  light  are  dear,"  were 
also  addressed  to  her. 


WILLIAM  WORDS  WORTH.  ^e 

It  was  through  her  early  friendship  for  Wordsworth's 
sister  that  she  first  came  to  know  the  poet,  and  she  was 
not  at  that  time  a  person  whom  a  poet  would  be  supposed 
to  fancy.  She  was  the  incarnation  of  good-sense  as  ap- 
plied to  the  concerns  of  the  every-day  world,  and  in  no 
sense  a  dreamer,  or  a  seeker  after  the  ideal.  Her  intel- 
lect, however,  developed  by  contact  with  higher  minds, 
and  her  tastes  after  a  time  became  more  in  accordance 
with  those  of  her  husband.  She  learned  to  passionately 
admire  the  outward  world,  in  which  he  took  such  great 
delight,  and  to  admire  his  poetry  and  that  of  his  friends. 
She  was  of  a  kindly,  cheery,  generous  nature,  very  un- 
selfish in  her  dealings  with  her  family,  and  highly  beloved 
by  her  friends.  She  was  the  finest  example  of  thrift 
and  frugality  to  be  found  in  her  neighborhood,  and  is 
said  to  have  exerted  a  decidedly  beneficial  influence 
upon  all  her  poorer  neighbors.  She  did  not  give  them 
as  much  in  charity  as  many  others  did,  but  she  taught 
them  how  to  take  care  of  what  they  had,  and  to  save 
something  for  their  days  of  need.  Miss  Martineau, 
who  was  a  neighbor,  says  :  "  The  oldest  residents  have 
long  borne  witness  that  the  homes  of  the  neighbors  have 
assumed  a  new  character  of  order  and  comfort  and 
wholesome  economy,  since  the  poet's  family  lived  at 
Rydal  Mount."  She  took  the  kindest  and  tenderest  care 
of  Wordsworth's  sister  Dorothy,  who  was  for  many  years 
a  helpless  charge  upon  her  hands.  This  sister  had  ruined 
her  health,  and  finally  dethroned  her  reason,  by  trying  to 
accompany  her  brother  on  his  long  and  tiresome  rambles 
among  the  lakes  and  up  the  mountains.  She  has  been 
known  to  walk  with  him  forty  miles  in  a  single  day.  Many 
English  women  are  famous  walkers,  but  her  record  is  be- 
yond them  all.  Such  excessive  exercise  is  bad  for  a  man, 
as  was  proved  in  the  case  of  Dickens,  who  doubtless  in- 
jured himself  much  by  such  long  pedestrian  trips  after 
brain  labor ;  but  no  woman  can  endure  such  a  strain  as 
this,  and  the  adoring  sister  not  only  failed  to  be  a  com- 
panion to  her  idolized  brother,  but  became  a  care  and 


46  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

burden  for  many  years.  She  lies  now  by  her  brother's 
side  in  the  crowded  little  churchyard,  and  doubtless  the 
"  sweet  bells  jangled  "  are  in  tune  again.  A  lovely  group 
of  children  filled  the  Wordsworth  home,  some  of  whom 
died  in  childhood ;  but  one  daughter  and  two  sons  lived, 
as  loving  companions  for  their  parents,  until  near  the 
end  of  the  poet's  hfe,  when  the  daughter  Dora  preceded 
him  a  Httle  into  the  silent  land.  Wordsworth  was  utterly 
inconsolable  for  her  loss ;  and  used  to  spend  the  long 
winter  evenings  in  tears,  week  after  week,  and  month 
after  month.  Mrs.  Wordsworth  was  much  braver  than  he, 
and  bore  her  own  burdens  calmly,  while  trying  to  cheer 
his  exaggerated  gloom.  He  was  old  and  broken  at  this 
time,  and  never  recovered  from  the  shock  of  his  daughter's 
death.  Mrs.  Wordsworth  survived  him  for  several  years, 
being  over  ninety  at  the  time  of  her  death,  and  having 
long  been  deaf  and  blind.  But  she  was  very  cheerful 
and  active  to  the  last,  and  not  unwilling  to  live  on,  even 
with  her  darkened  vision.  The  devotion  of  the  old  poet 
to  his  wife  was  very  touching,  and  she  who  had  idolized 
him  in  life  was  never  weary  of  recounting  his  virtues  when 
he  was  gone. 

The  character  of  Wordsworth  is  getting  to  be  understood 
as  we  recede  from  the  prejudices  of  the  time  in  which  he 
lived,  and  begins  to  assume  something  like  a  consistent 
whole,  compared  to  the  contradictions  which  at  one  time 
seemed  to  be  inherent  in  it.  He  says  of  his  own  child- 
hood :  — 

"  I  was  of  a  stiff,  moody,  and  violent  temper ;  so  much 
so  that  I  remember  going  once  into  the  attic  of  my  grand- 
father's house  at  Penrith,  upon  some  indignity  having  been 
put  upon  me,  with  an  intention  of  destroying  myself  with 
one  of  the  foils  which  I  knew  were  kept  there.  I  took  the 
foil  in  my  hand,  but  my  heart  failed." 

De  Quincey  says  of  his  boyhood  :  — 

"  I  do  not  conceive  that  Wordsworth  could  have  been  an 
amiable  boy  ;  he  was  austere  and  unsocial,  I  have  reason  to 
think,  in  his  habits  ;  not  generous  ;  and  above  all,  not  self- 


WILLIAM   WORDSWORTH.  aj 

denying.  Throughout  his  later  life,  with  all  the  benefits  of  a 
French  discipHne,  in  the  lesser  charities  of  social  intercourse 
he  has  always  exhibited  a  marked  impatience  of  those  par- 
ticular courtesies  of  life.  .  .  .  Freedom,  —  unlimited,  care- 
less, insolent  freedom,  —  unoccupied  possession  of  his  own 

arms,  —  absolute  control  over  his  own  legs  and  motions, 

these  have  always  been  so  essential  to  his  comfort  that  in 
any  case  where  they  were  hkely  to  become  questionable,  he 
would  have  dechnedto  make  one  of  the  party." 

Wordsworth  has  been  accused  of  excessive  penurious- 
ness,  of  overwhelming  conceit,  and  of  being  slovenly  and 
regardless  of  dress.  For  the  first  accusation  there  seems 
little  warrant,  other  than  that  he  was  prudent  and  thrifty, 
and  knew  the  value  of  money.  His  most  intimate 
friends  exonerate  him  from  meanness  of  any  sort,  and 
often  praise  his  kindness  to  the  poor  and  dependent.  As 
regards  conceit  there  can  probably  be  no  denial,  though 
doubtless  the  stories  told  of  it  are  much  exaggerated.  He 
is  said  never  to  have  read  any  poetry  but  his  own,  and  to 
have  been  exceedingly  ill-natured  and  contemptuous  in 
his  estimate  of  his  contemporaries.  His  estimate  of 
Dickens  is  well  known  :  — 

"  I  will  candidly  avow  that  I  thought  him  a  very  talkative, 
vulgar  young  person,  —  but  I  dare  say  he  may  be  very  clever. 
JMind,  I  don't  want  to  say  a  word  against  him,  for  I  have 
never  read  a  word  he  has  written." 

He  greeted  Charles  Mackay  thus,  when  the  latter  called 
upon  him  :  — 

"  I  am  told  you  write  poetry,  I  never  read  a  line  of  your 
poems  and  don't  intend  to.  You  must  not  be  offended  with 
me  ;    the   truth   is,  I    never  read  anybody's  poetry  but  my 


Even  James  T.  Fields,  whose  opinion  of  the  poet  was 
high,  remarks  :  — 

"  I  thought  he  did  not  praise  easily  those  whose  names 
are   indissolubly  connected  with  his  own  in  the  historv  of 


48  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

literature.  It  was  languid  praise,  at  least ;  and  I  observed 
that  he  hesitated  for  mild  terms  which  he  could  apply  to 
names  almost  as  great  as  his  own." 

Carlyle  testifies  on  the  same  point :  — 

"  One  evening,  probably  about  this  time,  I  got  him  upon 

the  subject  of  great  poets,  who  I  thought  might  be  admira- 
ble equally  to  us  both;  but  was  rather  mistaken,  as  I  gradu- 
ally found.  Pope's  partial  failure  I  was  prepared  for;  less 
for  the  narrowish  hmits  visible  in  Milton  and  others.  I  tried 
him  with  Burns,  of  whom  he  had  sung  tender  recognition; 
but  Burns  also  turned  out  to  be  a  limited,  inferior  creature, 
any  genius  he  had  a  theme  for  one's  pathos  rather ;  even 
Shakespeare  himself  had  his  blind  sides,  his  limitations. 
Gradually  it  became  apparent  to  me  that  of  transcendent  un- 
limited, there  was  to  this  critic  probably  but  one  specimen 
known,  —  Wordsworth." 

As  regards  eccentricities  of  dress,  we  will  give  but  a 
single  testimony.     William  Jordan  says  :  — 

"  On  his  visits  to  town  the  recluse  of  Rydal  Mount  was 
quite  a  different  creature.  To  me  it  was  demonstrated,  by 
his  conduct  under  every  circumstance,  that  De  Ouincey  had 
done  him  gross  injustice  in  the  character  he  loosely  threw 
upon  him  in  public,  namely,  'that  he  was  not  generous  or 
self-denying,  .  .  .  and  that  he  was  slovenly  and  regardless  in 
dress.'  I  must  protest  that  there  was  no  warrant  for  this 
caricature;  but  on  the  contrary,  that  it  bore  no  feature  of 
resemblance  to  the  slight  degree  of  eccentricity  discoverable 
in  Cumberland,  and  was  utterly  contradicted  by  the  life  in 
London.  In  the  mixed  society  of  the  great  Babylon,  Mr. 
Wordsworth  was  facile  and  courteous  ;  dressed  like  a  gen- 
tleman, and  with  his  tall  commanding  figure  no  mean  type 
of  the  superior  order,  well-trained  by  education,  and  accus- 
tomed to  good  manners.  Shall  I  reveal  that  he  was  often 
sportive,  and  could  even  go  the  length  of  strong  expressions, 
in  the  off-hand  mirth  of  his  observations  and  criticisms  ?  " 

Wordsworth  had  the  fondness  of  many  poets  for  read- 
ing his  poetry  to  his  friends,  and  even  of  reciting  it  like 


WILLIAM   WORDSWORTH.  ^g 

a  schoolboy.  When  Emerson  visited  him  he  was  akeady 
an  old  man,  and  it  struck  the  philosopher  so  oddly,  as 
he  tells  us  in  his  "  English  Traits,"  to  see  "  the  old  Words- 
worth, standing  apart,  and  reciting  to  me  in  a  garden 
walk,  Hke  a  schoolboy  declaiming,  that  I  at  first  was  near 
to  laugh ;  but  recollecting  myself,  that  I  had  come  thus 
far  to  see  a  poet,  and  he  was  chanting  poems  to  me,  I 
saw  that  he  was  right  and  1  was  wrong,  and  gladly  gave 
myself  up  to  hear." 

Another  story  is  told  of  his  being  in  a  large  company, 
and  seeing  for  the  first  time  a  new  novel  by  Scott,  with  a 
motto  taken  from  his  poems ;  and  of  his  going  immedi- 
ately and  getting  the  poem,  and  reading  it  entire  to  the 
assembled  company,  who  were  waiting  for  the  reading  of 
the  new  novel. 

Literary  biography  is  full  of  such  anecdotes  as  these, 
going  to  show  his  absorption  in  himself,  and  his  com- 
parative indifference  to  the  works  of  others ;  but  they 
prove  at  most  only  a  trifling  weakness  in  a  great  man's 
character ;  such  weaknesses  being  so  common  as  to  cause 
no  surprise  to  those  familiar  with  the  lives  of  men  of 
genius.  He  was  a  strong  man,  massive  in  his  individu- 
ality, full  of  profound  feeling  and  deep  spirituality,  and 
dominated  by  a  powerful  will.  He  was  no  mere  senti- 
mentalist and  versifier,  but  a  student  at  first  hand  of 
Nature  and  all  her  mysteries,  —  a  man  whose  profound 
meditations  had  pierced  to  the  centre  of  things,  and  who 
held  great  thoughts  in  keeping  for  a  waiting  and  expect- 
ant world.  His  outward  life  was  full  of  proofs  of  the  wide 
and  deep  benevolence  of  his  nature  ;  and  it  was  only  shallow- 
minds  who  dwelt  upon  some  petty  defects  of  his  character. 
The  deep  wisdom  gained  by  contemplation  comes  forth 
whenever  he  talks  of  childhood.  This  subject  always 
possesses  inspiration  for  him,  as  when  he  says  :  — 

"  Our  birth  is  but  a  sleep  and  a  forgetting ; 
The  soul  that  rises  with  us,  our  life's  star, 
Hath  had  elsewhere  its  setting, 
And  Cometh  from  afar. 

4 


50  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

Not  in  entire  forgetfulness, 

And  not  in  utter  nakedness, 
But  trailing  clouds  of  glory  do  we  come 

From  God  who  is  our  home. 
Heaven  lies  about  us  in  our  infancy  ! 
Shades  of  the  prison-house  begin  to  close 

Upon  the  growing  boy, 
But  he  beholds  the  light,  and  whence  it  flows,  — 

He  sees  it  in  his  joy. 
The  youth,  who  daily  farther  from  the  east 
Must  travel,  still  is  Nature's  priest, 

And  by  the  vision  splendid 

Is  on  his  way  attended  ; 
At  length  the  man  perceives  it  die  away, 
And  fade  into  the  light  of  common  day." 

This  conception  of  the  nearness  of  the  child  to  the 
unseen  made  all  children  sacred  in  his  eyes,  and  he 
always  felt  that  he  learned  more  from  them  than  he  could 
teach  them.     He  expresses  this  thought  often,  as  thus  :  — 

"  Oh  dearest,  dearest  boy ;  my  heart 
For  better  lore  would  seldom  yearn, 
Could  I  but  teach  the  hundredth  part 
Of  what  from  thee  I  learn." 

And  again :  — 

"  Dear  child ;  dear  girl ;  thou  walkest  with  me  here ; 
If  thou  appear  untouched  by  solemn  thought, 
Thy  nature  is  not  therefore  less  divine ; 
Thou  liest  in  Abraham's  bosom  all  the  year  ; 
And  worship'st  at  the  Temple's  inner  shrine, 
God  being  wth  thee  when  we  know  it  not." 

His  own  children  he  loved  almost  to  idolatry,  and  after 
the  lapse  of  forty  years,  would  speak  with  the  deepest  emo- 
tion of  the  little  ones  who  had  died.  Indeed,  he  was  a 
man  of  profound  feeling,  passionate  and  intense  in  his 
loves,  though  outwardly  calm  and  self-contained.  He 
himself  says :  — 

"  Had  I  been  a  writer  of  love-poetry,  it  would  have  been 
natural  for  me  to  write  it  with  a  degree  of  warmth  which 
could  hardly  have  been  approved  by  my  principles,  and 
which  might  have  been  undesirable  for  the  reader." 


WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH.  ^i 

His  sister  Dorothy  frequently  refers  to  the  intensity 
of  his  passionate  affection  for  the  members  of  his  family, 
and  of  the  full  and  free  expression  he  gave  it.  Greatly 
indeed  have  they  erred  who  have  imagined  him  as  by 
nature  cold  or  even  tranquil.  "  What  strange  workings," 
writes  one,  "  are  there  in  his  great  mind  !  how  fearfully 
strong  are  all  his  feelings  and  affections  !  If  his  intellect 
had  been  less  powerful  they  would  have  destroyed  him 
long  ago."  Indeed,  no  one  who  had  ever  known  him 
well  could  doubt  this  intensity  of  nature,  this  smothered 
fire.  It  leaped  out  in  bursts  of  anger  at  the  report  of  evil 
doings ;  in  long  and  violent  tramps  over  the  mountains, 
in  exaggerated  grief  at  the  death  of  loved  ones ;  and  in 
almost  unnatural  intensity  of  devotion,  to  his  sister  first, 
and  his  daughter  Dora  aftenvards.  It  took  the  form  of 
passionate  adoration  of  Nature  in  his  poems,  and  of  pas- 
sionate patriotism  as  well,  and  it  gave  strength  and  fire  to 
the  best  of  all  his  literary  work. 

Let  us  dwell  for  a  moment  more  upon  the  married  life 
of  the  poet,  —  that  calm  and  quiet  and  happy  life  which 
made  it  possible  that  he  should  be  the  poet  he  was,  un- 
vexed  by  worldly  cares  or  vanities.  His  late  biographer, 
Mr.  Myers,  tells  us  :  — 

"  The  life  which  the  young  couple  led  was  one  of  primi- 
tive simplicity.  In  some  respects  it  was  even  less  luxurious 
than  that  of  the  peasants  about  them.  They  drank  water, 
and  ate  the  simplest  fare.  Miss  Wordsworth  had  long  ren- 
dered existence  possible  for  her  brother,  on  the  narrowest  of 
means,  by  her  unselfish  energy  and  skill  in  household  man- 
agement;  and  plain  living  and  high  thinking  were  equally 
congenial  to  the  new  inmate  of  the  frugal  home.  Words- 
worth gardened ;  and  all  together,  or  oftenest  the  poet  and 
his  sister,  wandered  almost  daily  over  the  neighboring  hills. 
Narrow  means  did  not  prevent  them  from  offering  a  gene- 
rous welcome  to  their  few  friends,  especially  Coleridge  and 
his  family,  who  repeatedly  stayed  for  months  under  Words- 
worth's roof.  Miss  Wordsworth's  letters  breathe  the  very 
spirit  of  hospitality  in  their  naive  details  of  the  little  sacri- 
fices  gladly   made   for  the  sake  of  the  presence  of  these 


52 


HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 


honored  guests.  But  for  the  most  part  the  h'fe  was  solitary 
and  uneventful.  Books  they  had  few,  neighbors  none,  and 
their  dependence  was  almost  entirely  upon  external  nature." 

The  cottage  in  which  they  lived  was  very  small,  but 
they  covered  it  with  roses  and  honeysuckles,  and  had  a 
httle  garden  around  it.  Inside,  all  was  the  perfection  of 
simplicity,  but  the  soul  of  neatness  and  thrift  pervaded 
everything,  and  love  glorified  it  all.  They  had  a  little 
boat  upon  the  lake,  and  rowing  and  walking  were  their 
pleasures. 

They  lived  in  this  simple  fashion  that  the  poet  might 
pursue  his  high  vocation,  and  not  be  put  into  the  tread- 
mill of  any  steady  work.  In  after  years,  through  bequests 
from  friends  and  a  pension  from  Government,  they  were 
made  more  prosperous,  and  their  declming  years  were 
cheered  by  an  assured  abundance.  Rydal  Mount  has 
been  described  so  often  that  it  is  familiar  to  most  readers^ 
The  house  stands  looking  southward,  on  the  rocky  side  of 
Nab  Scar  above  Rydal  Lake.  The  garden  is  terraced, 
and  was  full  of  flowering  alleys  in  the  poet's  time.  There 
was  a  tall  ash-tree  in  which  the  thrushes  always  suzig, 
and  a  laburnum  in  which  the  osier  cage  of  the  doves  was 
hung.  There  were  stone  steps,  in  which  poppies  and 
wild  geraniums  filled  the  interstices  ;  and  rustic  seats  here 
and  there,  where  they  all  sat  all  day  during  the  pleasant 
weather.  The  poet  spent  very  little  time  in-doors.  He 
lived  constantly  in  the  open  air,  composing  all  his  poems 
there,  and  committing  them  to  paper  aftenvards.  Their 
friends  grew  more  numerous  in  later  life,  and  Wordsw'orth 
much  enjoyed  their  companionship,  being  himself  very 
bright  and  delightful  company  when  in  the  mood  for  talk. 
Here  that  strange  being,  Thomas  De  Quincey,  came  and 
lived,  purposely  to  be  near  the  poet.  Coleridge  was  always 
at  call,  genial  Kit  North  paid  loyal  court  to  the  great  man 
from  the  first,  and  loving  and  gentle  Charles  Lamb  came 
at  times,  sadly  missing  the  town,  and  almost  afraid  of  the 
mountains.     Here  Dr.  Arnold  of  Rugby  came  often  from 


WILLIAM   WORDSWORTH.  53 

Fox  How,  his  own  house  in  the  neighborhood ;  hither 
Harriet  Martineau  walked  over  from  Ambleside,  with 
some  new  theory  of  the  universe  to  expound ;  and  here 
poor  Hartley  Coleridge  passed  the  happiest  hours  of  his 
unfortunate  life.  Wordsworth's  kindness  and  tenderness 
to  this  poor  son  of  his  great  friend  were  well  known  to 
his  little  world,  and  show  some  of  the  most  pleasing  traits 
of  his  character.  This  amiable  and  gifted  man.  Hartley 
Coleridge,  ruined  himself  through  the  weakness  of  his  will, 
finding  it  utterly  impossible  to  leave  wine  alone,  even  when 
he  knew  it  was  ruining  his  life,  and  so  sorely  afflicting  his 
friends.  Wordsworth  dealt  with  him  Uke  a  father,  recog- 
nizing the  weakness  of  his  character,  and  perhaps  being 
able  to  trace  it  to  inherited  tendencies,  —  the  elder  Cole- 
ridge's devotion  to  opium  being  well  known.  Poor  Hartley 
lies  with  Wordsworth's  own  family  in  the  little  churchyard 
at  Grasmere,  and  we  trust  in  that  quiet  retreat  sleeps  well, 
at  the  foot  of  his  friend  and  master. 

Wordsworth's  last  years  were  of  great  solemnity  and 
calm.  He  lived  in  retrospection,  and  dwelt  much  upon 
the  unseen  world.  The  deep  spirituality  of  his  nature 
was  shown  in  all  his  later  life.  He  was  absorbed,  as  it 
were,  in  thoughts  of  God,  and  of  the  ultimate  destiny 
of  man.  All  worldly  interests  died  out,  and  he  was  able 
to  write  even  of  his  fame  :  — 

"  It  is  indeed  a  deep  satisfaction  to  hope  and  believe 
that  my  poetry  will  be,  while  it  lasts,  a  help  to  the  cause  of 
virtue  and  truth,  especially  among  the  young.  As  for  myself, 
it  seems  now  of  httle  moment  how  long  I  may  be  remem- 
bered. When  a  man  pushes  off  in  his  little  boat  into  the 
great  seas  of  Infinity  and  Eternity,  it  surely  signifies  little 
how  long  he  is  kept  in  sight  by  watchers  from  the  shore." 


THOMAS    DE   OUINCEY. 

THE  Florentines  used  to  point  Dante  out  to  strangers 
in  these  words  :  "  There  goes  the  man  who  has 
been  in  hell."  With  much  truth  could  these  words  have 
been  spoken  of  Thomas  De  Quincey,  at  any  time  after 
he  began  to  suffer  from  his  excess  in  opium  eating,  which 
was  while  he  was  still  a  young  man,  —  and  especially 
would  these  words  have  been  true  of  him,  after  he  began 
his  struggles  to  free  himself  from  the  thraldom  of  that 
most  seductive  vice.  James  Payn  thus  describes  his 
appearance  :  — 

"Picture  to  yourself  a  very  diminutive  man,  carelessly  — 
very  carelessly  —  dressed;  a  face  lined,  care-worn,  and  so 
expressionless  that  it  reminded  one  of  '  that  dull,  changeless 
brow,  where  cold  Obstruction's  apathy  appalls  the  gazing 
mourner's  heart,'  —  a  face  like  death  in  life.  The  instant  he 
began  to  speak,  however,  it  lit  up  as  though  by  electric  light ; 
this  came  from  his  marvellous  eyes,  brighter  and  more  intel- 
ligent (though  by  fits)  than  I  have  ever  seen  in  any  other 
mortal." 

Another  \vrites  :  — 

"  Conceive  a  little,  pale-faced,  woe-begone,  and  attenuated 
man,  with  short  indescribables,  no  coat,  check  shirt,  and  a 
neck-cloth  twisted  like  a  wisp  of  straw,  opening  his  door, 
and  advancing  toward  you  with  hurried  movement  and  half- 
recognizing  glance,  saluting  you  in  low  and  hesitating  tones, 
and  without  looking  at  you,  beginning  to  pour  into  your  will- 
ing ear  a  stream  of  learning  and  wisdom,  as  long  as  you  are 
content  to  listen.  .  .  .  His  head  is  small ;  how  can  it  carry  all 


THOMAS  DE   QUINCE Y.  ce 

he  knows  ?  His  brow  is  singular  in  shape,  but  not  particu- 
larly large  or  prominent;  where  has  nature  expressed  his 
majestic  intellect  ?  His  eyes  —  they  sparkle  not,  they  shine 
not,  they  are  lustreless  ;  there  is  not  even  the  glare  which 
lights  up  sometimes  dull  eyes  into  eloquence  ;  and  yet,  even 
at  first,  the  tout  efisefnble  strikes  you  as  that  of  no  common 
man,  and  you  say,  ere  he  has  opened  his  lips,  '  He  is  either 
mad  or  inspired.' " 

In  all  literary  history  there  is  scarcely  a  man  about 
whose  hfe  and  character  hang  so  peculiar  an  interest  and 
fascination  as  about  De  Quincey.  He  has  himself  given 
a  most  vivid  account  of  his  childhood,  in  his  "  Autobio- 
graphic Sketches,"  and  in  the  "  Opium  Eater."  From  these 
we  learn  that  he  was  born  in  Manchester,  August  15,  1 785. 
His  father  was  a  very  wealthy  merchant  of  that  city,  who 
was  inclined  to  pulmonary  consumption,  and  lived  mostly 
abroad,  in  the  West  Indies  and  other  warm  cHmates. 
Thomas  had  several  brothers  and  sisters,  all  of  whom 
seem  to  have  been  rather  pecuhar  and  remarkable  children. 
He  was  a  very  precocious  child  himself,  sensitive,  excitable, 
and  given  to  dreams  and  visions,  —  living  largely  in  a  world 
of  imagination,  and  for  many  years  ruled  over  with  absolute 
despotism  by  an  older  brother.  The  loss  of  a  favorite  sis- 
ter in  very  early  childhood  seems  to  have  been  a  blow 
from  which  it  took  him  years  to  recover.  He  writes  of  it 
thus  :  — 

"  Inevitable  sometimes  it  is,  in  solitude,  that  this  should 
happen  to  minds  morbidly  meditative,  — that  when  we  stretch 
out  our  arms  in  darkness,  vainly  striving  to  draw  back  the 
sweet  faces  that  have  vanished,  slowly  arises  a  new  stratagem 
of  grief,  and  we  say,  '  Be  it  that  they  no  more  come  back 
to  us,  yet  what  hinders  but  we  should  go  to  thetn  ? '  Perilous 
is  that  crisis  for  the  young.  In  its  effect  perfectly  the  same 
as  the  ignoble  witchcraft  of  the  poor  African  OJjcaJi,  this  sub- 
limer  witchcraft  of  grief  will,  if  left  to  follow  its  own  natural 
course,  terminate  in  the  same  catastrophe  of  death.  Poetry, 
which  neglects  no  phenomena  that  are  interesting  to  the 
heart  of  man,  has  sometimes  touched  a  little 

'  On  the  sublime  attractions  of  the  grave.' 


56 


HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 


But  you  think  that  these  attractions,  existing  at  times  for 
the  adult,  could  not  exist  for  the  child.  Understand  that 
you  are  wrong.  Understand  that  these  attractions  do  exist 
for  the  child ;  and  perhaps  as  much  more  strongly  than  they 
can  exist  for  the  adult  by  the  whole  difference  between  the 
concentration  of  a  childish  love  and  the  inevitable  distrac- 
tion upon  multipHed  objects  of  any  love  that  can  affect 
any  adult.  .  .  .  Could  the  Erl-king's  Daughter  have  revealed 
herself  to  me,  and  promised  to  lead  me  where  my  sister  was, 
she  might  have  wiled  me  by  the  hand  into  the  dimmest  for- 
ests upon  earth." 

But  a  beatific  vision  rose  before  him,  one  day  in  church, 
and  he  saw  the  beautiful  sister  borne  away  in  the  clouds 
of  heaven  on  a  bed  of  filmy  whiteness,  surrounded  by 
a  celestial  throng ;  and  he  was  somewhat  comforted. 
After  twelve  years,  while  he  was  a  student  at  Oxford,  the 
vision  returned  to  him,  and  he  writes  of  it :  — 

"  Once  again,  the  nursery  of  my  childhood  expanded  be- 
fore me  ;  my  sister  was  moaning  in  bed  ;  I  was  beginning  to 
be  restless  with  fears  not  intelligible  to  myself.  Once  again 
the  nurse,  but  now  dilated  to  colossal  proportions,  stood  as 
upon  some  Grecian  stage  with  her  uplifted  hand,  and,  like 
the  superb  Medea  towering  amongst  her  children  in  the 
nursery  at  Corinth,  smote  me  senseless  to  the  ground. 
Again  I  am  in  the  chamber  with  my  sister's  corpse,  again 
the  pomps  of  life  rise  up  in  silence,  the  glory  of  summer,  the 
Syrian  sunlights,  the  frost  of  death.  Dream  forms  itself 
mysteriously  within  dream  ;  within  these  Oxford  dreams  re- 
moulds itself  continually  the  trance  in  my  sister's  chamber, — 
the  blue  heavens,  the  everlasting  vault,  the  soaring  billows, 
the  throne  steeped  in  the  thought  (but  not  the  sight)  of 
'  Who  might  sit  thereon  ; '  the  flight,  the  pursuit,  the  irre- 
coverable steps  of  my  return  to  earth.  Once  more  the 
funeral  procession  gathers  ;  the  priest,  in  his  white  surplice, 
stands  waiting  with  a  book  by  the  side  of  an  open  grave;  the 
sacristan  is  waiting  with  his  shovel;  the  coffin  has  sunk;  the 
dust  to  dust  has  descended.  Again  I  was  in  the  church  on 
a  heavenly  Sunday  morning.  The  golden  sunlight  of  God 
slept  amongst  the  heads  of  his  apostles,  his  martyrs,  his 
saints ;  the  fragment  from  the  litany,  the  fragment  from  the 
clouds,  awoke  again  the  lawny  beds  that  went  up  to  scale 


THOMAS  DE  QUINCE Y.  57 

the  heavens, — awoke  again  the  shadowy  arms  that  moved 
downward  to  meet  them.  Once  again  arose  the  swell  of  the 
anthem,  the  burst  of  the  Hallelujah  chorus,  the  storm,  the 
trampling  movement  of  the  choral  passion,  the  agitation  of 
my  own  trembling  sympathy,  the  tumult  of  the  choir,  the 
wrath  of  the  organ.  Once  more  I,  that  wallowed  in  the  dust, 
became  he  that  rose  up  to  the  clouds.  And  now  all  was 
bound  up  into  unity  ;  the  first  state  and  the  last  were  melted 
into  each  other  as  in  some  sunny,  glorifying  haze.  For  high 
in  heaven  hovered  a  gleaming  host  of  faces,  veiled  with 
wings,  around  the  pillows  of  the  dying  children.  And  such 
beings  sympathize  equally  with  sorrow  that  grovels  and  with 
sorrow  that  soars.  Such  beings  pity  alike  the  children  that 
are  languishing  in  death,  and  the  children  that  live  only  to 
languish  in  tears." 

This  extract  is  important  as  showing  that  when  a 
mere  child,  knowing  nothing  of  the  fatal  drug,  he  had  vis- 
ions similar  to  those  which  filled  his  after  years.  At  Ox- 
ford he  had  begun  the  use  of  opium  —  but  his  first  vision 
was  a  repetition  of  one  of  his  childish  years,  and  it  leads 
us  to  infer  that  his  own  vivid  imagination  bore  an  impor- 
tant part  in  the  briUiant  dreams  which  followed  his  taking 
of  opium.  No  person  of  ordinary  mind  could  induce 
those  gorgeous  and  bewildering  dreams  by  its  use.  In 
his  case  the  drug  acted  upon  a  mind  fitted  to  see 
visions  and  dream  dreams  even  without  its  use ;  and  the 
result  was  that  gorgeous  and  bewildering  phantasmagoria 
which  he  so  eloquently  describes. 

The  causes  of  his  first  indulging  in  opium  may  be 
briefly  glanced  at  here.  At  seventeen,  he  ran  away  from 
the  school  at  which  he  had  been  placed  by  his  guardians, 
his  father  now  being  dead.  He  wished  to  enter  college 
at  once,  and  it  appears  was  well  prepared  to  do  so,  and 
had  made  earnest  representations  to  his  guardians  upon 
the  subject,  as  he  was  unhappy  where  he  was,  and  under 
a  very  unsuitable  master.  But  they  would  not  consent, 
and,  like  one  of  his  brothers  who  ran  away  from  school 
and  went  to  sea,  he  borrowed  a  little  money  and  stole 
quietly  away  to  Wales. 


58  HOME  LIFE  OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

The  brother  had  left  school,  it  appears,  with  good  reason, 
beiog  brutally  treated ;  but  in  the  case  of  Thomas  there 
seems  to  have  been  no  complaint  of  real  ill-usige.  It 
was  simply  one  of  the  wilful  freaks  of  a  precocious  and 
fantastic  boy.  He  wandered  in  Wales  for  a  few  weeks, 
until  his  money  was  nearly  spent,  and  then  contrived  to 
get  to  London,  where  he  suffered  the  cruellest  pangs  of 
povem-,  although  he  was  a  young  gentleman  of  indepen- 
dent fortune.  It  is  dimcult  for  a  matter-of-fact  and  well- 
balanced  mind  to  conceive  of  an  experience  just  like  that 
of  De  Quincey.  AMiy  he  should  have  allowed  himself  to 
stan-e  rather  than  communicate  with  his  friends,,  we  are 
not  told,  —  it  could  scarcely  have  been  pride,  for  he 
accepted  help  even  from  strangers  when  it  was  offered,  — 
and  why  he  did  not  seek  some  of  the  friends  of  his  family 
in  the  cit}*  we  are  not  informed,  but  such  was  the  fact 

He  tells  the  stor}*  thus  :  — 

"  And  now  began  the  later  and  fiercer  stage  of  my  long 
sufferings :  without  using  a  disproportionate  expression,  I 
might  say  of  my  agony.  For  I  now  suffered  for  upwards  of 
sixteen  weeks  the  physical  anguish  of  hunger  in  various  de- 
grees of  intensity,  but  as  bitter,  perhaps,  as  ever  any  human 
being  can  have  suffered  who  has  survived  it.  I  would  not 
needlessly  harass  my  readers'  feelings  by  a  detail  of  all  that 
I  endured  ;  for  extremities  such  as  these,  under  any  circum- 
stances of  heaviest  misconduct  or  guilt,  cannot  be  contem- 
plated, even  in  description,  without  a  rueful  pity  that  is 
painful  to  the  natural  goodness  of  the  human  heart.  Let  it 
sufice  to  say  that  a  few  fragments  of  bread  from  the  break- 
fast table  of  one  indiWdual,  and  these  at  uncertain  intervals, 
constituted  my  whole  support.  ...  I  was  houseless,  and 
seldom  slept  under  a  roof." 

After  a  time,  however,  he  slept  in  an  unoccupied  house, 
or  unoccupied  save  by  a  child  of  ten  years,  —  as  forlorn  as 
himself.  She  slept  here,  and  was  much  tormented  by  the 
fear  of  ghosts.  She  hailed  his  advent  with  great  pleasure 
as  a  protection  from  supernatural  \isitants  ;  and  when  the 
weather  became  cold,  he  used  to  hold  her  in  his  arms 


THOMAS  DE   QUIXCEY.  5p 

that  she  might  gain  the  additional  comfort  of  a  Httle 
warmth.  He  says  they  lay  upon  the  floor  '•  with  a  bundle 
of  cursed  law  papers  for  a  pillow,  and  no  covering  save 
an  old  cloak."  He  slept  only  from  exhaustion,  and  could 
hear  himself  moaning  in  his  sleep ;  but  his  little  compan- 
ion, relieved  of  fear,  and  perhaps  a  httle  better  fed  than 
he,  slept  soundly  and  well  at  all  times.  He  learned  to 
love  the  poor  child  as  his  partner  in  wretchedness.  He 
made  also  one  other  friend,  a  girl  of  the  streets,  named 
Ann,  who  was  kind  to  him,  and  whom  he  remembered 
with  gratitude  to  the  end  of  his  hfe.     He  says  of  her  :  — 

"  This  person  was  a  young  woman,  and  one  of  that  un- 
happy class  who  subsist  upon  the  wages  of  prostitution.  .  .  . 
Yet,  no  1  let  me  not  class  thee,  O  noble-minded  Ann,  with 
that  order  of  women  ;  let  me  find,  if  it  be  possible,  some  gen- 
tler name  to  designate  the  condition  of  her  to  whose  bounty 
and  compassion  —  ministering  to  my  necessities  when  all 
the  world  had  forsaken  me  —  I  owe  it  that  I  am  at  this  time 
alive.  .  .  .  She  was  not  as  old  as  myself.  .  .  .  O  youthful 
benefactress!  how  often  in  succeeding  years,  standing  in 
solitary  places  and  thinking  of  thee  with  grief  of  heart  and 
perfect  love,  —  how  often  have  I  wished  that  as  in  ancient 
times  the  curse  of  a  father  was  believed  to  have  a  supernatu- 
ral power,  and  to  pursue  its  object  with  a  fatal  necessity  of 
self-fulfilment,  —  even  so  the  benediction  of  a  heart  op- 
pressed with  gratitude  might  have  a  like  prerogative.  —  might 
have  power  given  it  from  above  to  chase,  to  haunt,  to  waylay, 
to  overtake,  to  pursue  thee  into  the  central  darkness  of  a 
London  brothel,  or  (if  it  were  possible)  into  the  darkness  of 
the  grave,  there  to  awaken  thee  with  an  authentic  message 
of  peace  and  forgiveness  and  final  reconciliation  ! " 

The  youthful  wanderer  was  finally  discovered  by  his 
friends,  and  placed  by  his  wish  at  Oxford,  where  about  a 
year  after,  in  1804,  he  began  the  occasional  use  of  opium. 
He  did  this  merely  as  a  means  of  pleasure  at  first,  like 
the  drinking  of  wine,  and  took  it  only  at  stated  inter\-als 
for  a  period  of  eight  years.  He  seemed  to  experience  no 
harm  from  its  use  in  this  way ;  but  a  very  severe  neuralgic 
aftection  of  the  stomach  (caused,  it  is  supposed,  by  his  pri- 


So  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

vations  in  London  primarily)  developed  itself  at  the  end 
of  that  time,  and  he  resorted  to  the  habitual  use  of  opium 
as  a  relief  from  pain. 

He  was  married  in  1816  to  Miss  Margaret  Simpson,  and 
lived  with  her  in  a  cottage  at  Grasmere.  Of  this  wife,  with 
whom  he  lived  for  twenty-one  years,  he  thus  writes  :  — 

"But  watching  by  my  pillow,  or  defrauding  herself  of 
sleep  to  bear  me  company  through  the  heavy  watches  of  the 
night,  sat  my  Electra;  for  thou,  beloved  M.,  dear  companion 
of  my  later  years,  thou  wast  my  Electra!  and  neither  in  no- 
bility of  mind  nor  in  long-suffering  affection  would'st  permit 
that  a  Grecian  sister  should  excel  an  English  wife.  For 
thou  thoughtest  not  much  to  stoop  to  humble  offices  of  kind- 
ness, and  to  servile  ministrations  of  tenderest  affection  ;  to 
wipe  away  for  years  the  unwholesome  dews  upon  the  fore- 
head, or  to  refresh  the  lips  when  parched  and  baked  with 
fever  ;  nor  even  when  thy  own  peaceful  slumbers  had  by 
long  sympathy  become  infected  with  the  spectacle  of  my 
dread  contest  with  phantoms  and  shadowy  enemies  that 
oftentimes  bade  me  '  sleep  no  more  '  —  not  even  then  did'st 
thou  utter  a  complaint  or  any  murmur,  nor  withdraw  thy 
angelic  smiles,  nor  shrink  from  thy  service  of  love,  more  than 
did  Electra  of  old.  For  she  too,  though  she  was  a  Grecian 
woman,  and  the  daughter  of  the  king  of  men,  yet  wept  some- 
times, and  hid  her  face  in  her  robe  !  " 

Hard  indeed,  no  doubt,  was  the  wife's  lot  through  all 
those  years ;  but  the  world  will  never  have  more  than  this 
mere  glimpse  of  her  sorrow  and  her  devotion.  Yet  to  a 
person  gifted  with  imagination,  it  is  enough.  He  can  re- 
construct from  it  that  long  period  of  patient  watchfulness 
and  unwearied  devotion ;  he  can  share  her  hopes  when 
her  loved  one  makes  a  battle  with  his  enemy,  her  tears 
when  he  is  defeated,  her  rapture  when  he  makes  a  seem- 
ing conquest,  the  bitterness  of  her  anguish  when  he 
again  falls.  For  all  this  was  gone  through,  not  once,  but 
three  times,  in  the  course  of  De  Quincey's  life.  It  was 
not  until  he  felt  that  death  was  inevitable  if  he  continued 
the  use  of  opium  (which  he  was  then  taking  in  enormous 


THOMAS  DE   QUINCE Y.  6i 

quantities)  that  he  ever  resolved  to  give  up  its  use.  He 
knew  he  must  die  if  he  kept  on,  he  thought  he  should  die 
if  he  gave  it  up,  but  he  determined  to  make  the  effort. 
His  studies  had  long  been  abandoned ;  he  could  not  even 
read.  For  two  years  he  had  read  but  one  book ;  he 
shrank  from  study  with  a  sense  of  infantine  powerlessness 
that  gave  him  great  anguish  when  he  remembered  what 
his  mind  had  formerly  been.  From  misery  and  suffering, 
he  might  almost  be  described  as  being  in  a  dormant  state. 
His  wife  managed  all  the  affairs  of  the  household,  and 
attended  to  necessary  business.  He  did  not  lose  his 
moral  sensibilities  or  aspirations,  as  so  many  opium  eaters 
do,  but  his  intellect  seemed  dead.  His  brain  had  become 
a  theatre,  which  presented  spectacles  of  more  than  earthly 
splendor,  but  as  often  painful  as  pleasurable.  He  had  no 
control  now  of  the  dreams  which  haunted  him.  He 
learned  now  the  awful  tyranny  of  the  human  face. 

"  Upon  the  rocking  waters  of  the  ocean,  the  human  face 
began  to  appear ;  the  sea  appeared  paved  with  innumerable 
faces,  upturned  to  the  heavens, — faces  imploring,  wrath- 
ful, despairing,  surged  upwards  by  thousands,  by  myriads, 
by  generations,  by  centuries  ;  my  agitation  was  infinite,  my 
mind  tossed  and  surged  with  the  ocean.  ...  I  was  buried 
for  a  thousand  years  in  stone  coffins,  with  mummies  and 
sphinxes,  in  narrow  chambers  at  the  heart  of  eternal  pyra- 
mids. I  was  kissed  with  cancerous  kisses  by  crocodiles  ;  and 
laid  confounded  with  all  unutterable  slimy  things,  among 
reeds  and  Nilotic  mud.  .  .  .  The  cursed  crocodile  be- 
came to  me  the  object  of  more  horror  than  almost  all  the 
rest.     I  was  compelled  to  live  with  him  for  centuries." 

The  struggle  was  a  long  and  hard  one,  and  of  it  he 
says  :  — 

"  Jeremy  Taylor  conjectures  that  it  may  be  as  painful  to 
be  born  as  to  die,  I  think  it  probable ;  and  during  the 
whole  period  of  my  diminishing  opium  I  had  the  torments 
of  a  man  passing  out  of  one  mode  of  existence  into  an- 
other. .  .  .  One  memorial  of  my  former  condidon  still  re- 
mains ;  my  dreams  are  not  yet  perfectly  calm  ;  the  dread  swell 


62  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

and  agitation  of  the  storm  have  not  wholly  subsided.  My 
dreams  are  still  tumultuous,  and  like  the  gates  of  Paradise  to 
our  first  parents  when  looking  back  from  afar,  it  is  still,  in 
the  tremendous  line  of  Milton, 

'  With  dreadful  faces  thronged,  and  fiery  arms.'  " 

It  is  sad  to  learn  that  after  all  his  struggles  he  never 
really  succeeded  in  freeing  himself  from  the  spell  of 
opium.  We  learn  that  "  after  having  at  one  time 
abstained  wholly  for  sixty-one  days,  he  was  compelled 
to  return  to  its  moderate  use,  as  life  was  found  to  be 
insupportable ;  and  there  is  no  record  of  any  further 
attempt  at  total  abstinence."  His  indulgence  was,  how- 
ever, very  limited  in  his  later  years.  Weakly  as  he  was, 
and  wath  a  stomach  which  could  digest  but  the  smallest 
quantity  of  food,  he  lived  in  tolerable  health  until  he  was 
seventy-four  years  old.  His  wife  died  over  twenty  years 
before  he  passed  away ;  and  his  daughters  made  a  home 
for  him  during  that  time,  and  cared  for  him,  as  his  wife 
had  done.  He  could  never  be  trusted  with  any  practical 
matters  whatever.  He  had  a  nervous  horror  of  handling 
money,  and  would  give  away  bank-notes  to  get  them  out 
of  his  way.  He  was  very  generous  when  young,  and 
gave  Coleridge  three  hundred  pounds  at  one  time,  in- 
sisting upon  making  it  five  hundred,  which  was  not 
allowed.  He  never  had  a  friend  who  was  not  welcome 
to  his  purse.  While  he  had  no  care  whatever  about  his 
dress,  and  would  frequently  enter  the  drawing-room,  even 
when  company  was  there,  with  but  one  stocking  on,  or 
minus  some  other  very  necessary  adjunct  of  dress,  he  was 
very  dainty  and  neat  about  many  things.  The  greasy, 
crumpled,  Scotch  one-pound  notes  annoyed  him.  He 
did  his  best  to  smooth  and  cleanse  them,  before  parting 
with  them,  and  he  washed  and  poHshed  shilhngs  up  to 
their  pristine  brightness  before  giving  them  away.  He 
used  to  complain  of  Wordsworth,  because  of  a  lack  of 
neatness,  and  describes  somewhere  his  agony  at  seeing 
the   old  poet   cut  the    leaves   of   a  new   book  with   a 


THOMAS  DE   QUINCE Y.  63 

knife  taken  from  the  supper-table,  where  buttered 
toast  had  been  eaten.  Coleridge  was  also  distressed 
over  Wordsworth's  treatment  of  books,  and  says  that 
one  would  as  soon  trust  a  bear  in  a  tulip-garden  as 
Wordsworth  in  a  library. 

De  Quincey  was  a  very  charming  companion  and  a 
most  brilliant  talker.  He  says  of  himself  and  Lamb, 
that  they  both  had  a  childish  love  of  nonsense, — 
headlong  nonsense.  While  much  given  to  reverie, 
and  somewhat  shy,  he  had  a  great  fund  of  humor, 
drollery,  and  effervescent  wit,  which  made  his  society 
much  Hked  by  all  fortunate  enough  to  be  acquainted 
with  him.  He  was  a  very  abstemious  man,  and  his 
tastes  were  of  the  simplest.  His  whole  manner  and 
speech  were  imbued  with  a  high-bred  courtesy,  though 
he  sometimes  loved  to  run  counter  to  the  ordinary 
conventionahties  of  life.  He  could  never  be  depended 
upon  for  keeping  any  sort  of  engagement,  and  if  a  friend 
wanted  him  to  dinner,  he  must  go  for  him  with  his 
carriage,  and  take  him  away.  His  manner  to  his 
daughters  was  the  perfection  of  chivalrous  respect,  as 
well  as  affection. 

What  he  might  have  been  had  he  never  contracted  his 
fatal  habit  of  opium  eating,  it  is  perhaps  useless  to  con- 
jecture ;  but  in  his  youth  he  was  thought  to  be  one  who 
might  do  anything,  —  all  things.  What  he  really  did  do, 
of  permanent  value,  is  very  little  compared  to  the  ex- 
pectations of  his  friends. 

Blameless  as  was  his  life  in  every  other  respect,  the 
pity  of  this  weakness  seems  infinitely  great,  and  we 
mourn  over  his  lot  with  the  same  unavailing  sorrow  with 
which  we  weep  over  the  graves  of  other  men  of  great 
gifts,  but  some  fatal  defect  of  will,  which  allows  them  to 
be  bound  and  held  captive  all  their  lives  in  the  chains  of 
some  darling  vice.  Mingled  with  the  rosemary  of  our  re- 
membrance for  such,  must  be  the  fennel  and  the  rue. 


WALTER  SCOTT. 


'Day  set  on  Norham's  castled  steep, 
And  Tweed's  fair  river,  broad  and  deep, 

And  Cheviot's  mountains  lone. 
The  battled  towers,  the  donjon  keep, 
The  loop-hole  grates,  where  captives  weep, 
The  flanking  walls  that  round  it  sweep. 

In  yellow  lustre  shone. 
The  warriors  on  the  turrets  high. 
Moving  athwart  the  evening  sky, 

Seemed  forms  of  giant  height ; 
Their  armor,  as  it  caught  the  rays, 
Flashed  back  again  the  western  blaze, 

In  lines  of  dazzling  light." 


WHO  does  not  remember  the  ring  of  the  opening 
lines  of  "  Marmion,"  —  pronounced  by  Horace 
Greeley  to  be  the  finest  verse  of  descriptive  writing  in 
the  language?  How  often  were  they  declaimed  from 
the  school  rostrums  in  the  days,  dear  reader,  when  you 
and  I  were  young !  What  do  school  boys  and  girls 
declaim  now,  we  wonder,  equal  to  the  selections  from 
Scott,  which  formed  the  greatest  part  of  our  stock  in 
trade?  Have  "  Marmion,"  and  "The  Lady  of  the 
Lake,"  and  the  immortal  "  Lay "  been  superseded  by 
the  trivialities  and  inanities  of  modem  poetasters?  or 
do  the  good  old  lines  still  hold  their  own?  Does  the 
orator  of  the  class  still  rise  and  electrify  the  whole 
school,  as  in  the  former  days,  by  drawing  his  cloak 
around  him,  like  the  noble  Douglas,  and  declaring :  — 


65 


WALTER  SCOTT. 

"  My  manors,  halls,  and  bowers  shall  still 
Be  open  to  my  Sovereign's  will, — 
To  each  one  whom  he  lists,  howe'er 
Unmeet  to  be  the  owner's  peer. 
My  castles  are  my  King's  alone, 
From  turret  to  foundation-stone : 
The  hand  of  Douglas  is  his  own ; 
And  never  shall  in  friendly  grasp 
The  hand  of  such  as  Marmion  clasp." 

And  is  the  whole  school  lost  in  breathless  admiration  still 
as  he  continues  :  — 

"  Burned  Marmion's  swarthy  cheek  like  fire, 
And  shook  his  very  frame  for  ire. 
And  — '  This  to  me  ! '  he  said ; 
*  An  't  were  not  for  thy  hoary  beard, 
Such  hand  as  Marmion's  had  not  spared 
To  cleave  the  Douglas'  head ! ' " 

We  wonder  does  the  — 


"  Minstrel  come  once  more  to  view 
The  eastern  ridge  of  Benvenue." 

And  if  he  still  sees  — 

"  the  dagger-crest  of  Mar, 
Still  sees  the  Moray's  silver  star. 
Wave  o'er  the  cloud  of  Saxon  war. 
That  up  the  lake  comes  winding  far  !  " 

And  does  the  blood  of  the  youthful  listener  still  thrill 
as  he  thinks  of  the  glory  of  that  cavalcade,  till  he  feels, 
as  we  used  of  old,  that  — 

" '  T  were  worth  ten  years  of  peaceful  life. 
One  glance  at  their  array." 

And  does  he  still  throw  the  old  pathos  into  the  Hnes,  — 

"  Where,  where  was  Roderick  then  ! 
One  blast  upon  his  bugle  horn 
Were  worth  a  thousand  men." 

Probably  he  does  not.  This  is  all  doubtless  very  old- 
fashioned,  and  we  doubt  if  the  modern  school  would  quite 
rise  to  the  situation,  even  when  Roderick  makes  him- 

5 


66  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

self  known  to  Fitz -James,  "  And,  stranger,  I  am  Roderick 
Dhu  j  "  but  in  the  days  we  wot  of,  you  and  I,  this  was  the 
most  thrilHng  climax  in  all  literature.  Have  the  boys 
outgrown  "  Ivanhoe"  too?  And  do  they  prefer  to  hear 
Du  Chaillu  tell  about  the  gorillas  he  invented,  or  go  with 
Jules  Verne  twenty  thousand  leagues  under  the  sea?  We 
hope  not,  for  their  sakes,  but  wish  that  they  may  enjoy 
the  tournament  as  we  did,  and  delight  in  the  "  clang  of 
the  armor,"  "  the  lifting  of  the  vizor,"  and  everything  con- 
nected with  "the  hsts."  We  trust,  too,  that  they  will 
walk  with  Sir  Walter  everywhere  throughout  the  Highlands, 
until  every  mount  and  loch  and  ruined  castle  has  be- 
come their  own  ;  that  they  will  follow  poor  Jeanie  Deans 
through  the  "  Heart  of  Mid- Lothian ;  "  that  they  will 
shed  true,  heartfelt  tears  over  "  Kenilworth,"  and  love  as 
did  the  older  generations  the  "  Bride  of  Lammermoor." 

Let  us  be  steadfast  in  our  love  of  the  old  books ;  let  us 
never  grow  weary  of  the  world -read  classics.  Who  cares 
for  the  books  of  the  year  ?  Next  twelvemonth  we  shall 
not  know  whether  we  have  read  them  or  not ;  but  what 
a  fadeless  possession  is  the  memory  of  one  of  the  world- 
books  !  Life  is  too  brief  to  be  spent  upon  ephemera ; 
let  us  go  back  from  our  wanderings  in  the  wilderness  of 
new  books,  and  draw  nearer  to  the  wells  of  English  un- 
defiled. 

To  this  end  let  us  study  this  man  "than  his  brethren 
taller  and  fairer,"  —  this  kingly  Sir  Walter  of  the  ancient 
line. 

He  says  that  "'every  Scotchman  has  a  pedigree."  It  is 
a  national  prerogative,  as  inalienable  as  his  pride  and  his 
poverty.  Sir  Walter's  pedigree  was  gentle,  he  being  con- 
nected, though  remotely,  with  ancient  families  upon  both 
sides  of  the  house.  He  was  lineally  descended  from  Auld 
Watt,  an  ancient  chieftain  whose  name  he  often  made 
ring  in  border  ballads.  He  was  one  of  twelve  children, 
and  was  not  specially  distinguished  through  childhood; 
though,  being  lame,  he  got  much  comfort  from  books. 
He   took  the   usual   amount   of  Latin,   but   obstinately 


WALTER  SCOTT.  67 

rebelled  at  the  Greek,  and  even  in  his  college  days  would 
have  none  of  it.  He  was  distinguished  there  by  the 
name  of  "The  Greek  Blockhead,"  and  even  his  excel- 
lent professor  was  betrayed  into  saying  that  "dunce  he 
was  and  dunce  he  would  remain,"  —  "  an  opinion,"  says 
Scott,  "which  my  excellent  and  learned  friend  lived  to 
revoke  over  a  bottle  of  Burgundy  after  I  had  achieved 
some  literary  distinction."  He  read  everything  he  could 
lay  hands  on,  in  English,  all  through  his  youth,  and  his 
reading  seems  to  have  been  entirely  undirected.  He  tells 
about  discovering  "  some  odd  volumes  of  Shakspeare,"  and 
adds  :  "  Nor  can  I  forget  the  rapture  with  which  I  sat  up  in 
my  shirt  reading  them  by  the  light  of  a  fire  in  my  mother's 
apartment,  until  the  busde  of  the  family  rising  from  supper 
warned  me  it  was  time  to  creep  back  to  my  bed,  where  I 
was  supposed  to  have  been  safely  deposited  since  nine 
o'clock."  He  soon  after  became  enamoured  of  Ossian  and 
Spenser,  whom  he  thought  he  could  have  read  forever. 

His  first  acquaintance  with  the  Highlands  he  was  to 
immortalize  was  made  in  his  fifteenth  year.  The  same 
year  he  became  apprenticed  to  the  law  in  his  father's  office. 
The  Highland  visits  were  repeated  nearly  every  year  there- 
after, and  from  the  first  afforded  him  the  greatest  dehght. 
Of  this  first  visit  he  says  :  "  Since  that  hour  the  recol- 
lection of  that  inimitable  landscape  has  possessed  the 
strangest  influence  over  my  mind,  and  retained  its  place 
as  a  memorable  thing,  while  much  that  was  influential  on 
my  own  fortunes  has  fled  from  my  recollections." 

His  appearance  at  this  time  was  very  engaging.  He  had 
outgrown  his  early  sallowness  and  had  a  fresh,  brilliant 
complexion.  His  eyes  were  clear,  open,  and  well  set,  with 
a  changeful  expression  ;  his  teeth  were  dazzling  white,  and 
his  smile  delightful.  In  very  early  youth  he  formed  a 
strong  attachment  for  a  young  lady  very  highly  connected, 
and  of  position  far  above  his  own,  and  of  great  personal 
attractions.  Their  acquaintance  began  in  the  Grey  Friars 
Churchyard,  where,  rain  beginning  to  fall  one  Sunday 
as  the  congregation  were  dispersing,  Scott  happened  to 


68  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

offer  his  umbrella,  and,  the  offer  being  accepted,  he  es- 
corted her  to  her  residence.  The  acquaintance  proved 
pleasant  to  both,  and  they  met  frequently,  until  it  became 
an  understood  thing  that  he  should  escort  her  home  from 
church.  When  Scott's  father  learned  of  it  he  deemed  it 
his  duty  to  warn  the  young  lady's  father  of  the  interest 
the  young  pair  were  taking  in  each  other,  but  the  gende- 
man  did  not  think  it  necessary  to  interfere.  This  affec- 
tion was  nourished  through  several  years,  and  Scott  had 
no  thought  but  that  marriage  would  be  its  final  result,  as 
the  young  lady  warmly  reciprocated  his  attachment,  and 
the  parents  apparently  threw  no  obstacles  in  the  way. 
But  the  little  romance,  like  so  many  other  youthful  dreams, 
was  destined  to  be  rudely  broken,  and  the  lady  was  mar- 
ried in  due  time,  by  her  friends,  to  a  gentleman  of  high 
rank  and  character,  who  later  in  life  acted  the  part  of  a 
generous  patron  to  his  early  rival.  His  hopes  of  marriage 
with  this  lady  had  rendered  him  very  industrious  and  de- 
voted to  business,  and  kept  him  from  all  youthful  follies. 
These  things  were  certainly  clear  gains  to  the  young  man 
from  the  connection,  if  we  say  nothing  of  the  pleasant  store 
of  memories  with  which  it  furnished  his  whole  after-life. 
But  the  blow  was  a  severe  one  when  the  parting  came, 
and  Scott  could  not  refer  to  it  without  emotion  even  after 
many  years.  But  he  was  still  quite  young  —  not  over 
twenty-five  years  of  age  —  and  he  soon  saw  a  lady  in 
whom  he  grew  much  interested.  Riding,  Lockhart  tells 
us,  "  one  day  with  Ferguson,  they  met,  some  miles  from 
Gilsland,  a  young  lady  taking  the  air  on  horseback,  whom 
neither  of  them  had  previously  remarked,  and  whose  ap- 
pearance instantly  struck  them  both  so  much  they  kept 
her  in  view  until  they  had  satisfied  themselves  that  she 
also  was  one  of  the  party  at  Gilsland.  The  same  evening 
there  was  a  ball,  at  which  Captain  Scott  appeared  in  regi- 
mentals, and  Ferguson  also  thought  proper  to  be  equipped 
in  the  uniform  of  the  Edinburgh  Volunteers.  There  was 
no  little  rivalry  among  the  young  travellers  as  to  who 
should  first  get  presented  to  the  unknown  beauty  of  the 


WALTER  SCOTT. 


69 


morning's  ride ;  but  though  both  the  gentlemen  in  scarlet 
had  the  advantage  of  being  her  dancing-partners,  young 
Walter  succeeded  in  handing  the  fair  stranger  to  supper ; 
and  such  was  his  first  introduction  to  Charlotte  Margaret 
Carpenter."  She  was  very  beautiful,  —  ^  complexion  of 
clearest  and  lightest  olive,  eyes  large,  deep-set,  and  daz- 
zling, of  the  finest  Italian  brown,  and  a  profusion  of  black 
hair.  Her  manners  had  the  well-bred  reserve  of  an  Eng- 
lishwoman, and  something  of  the  coquetry  of  the  French 
from  whom  she  was  descended.  She  spoke  with  a  slight 
accent,  and  with  much  vivacity.  Madame  Charpentier 
had  made  her  escape  to  England  during  the  Revo- 
lution, —  her  husband  having  been  a  devoted  Royalist 
and  Government  officer,  —  and  she  had  brought  up  her 
children  as  Protestants.  No  lovelier  vision  than  that  of 
Margaret  had  ever  dazzled  the  eyes  of  our  young  hero, 
and  he  became  her  devoted  cavalier  at  once. 

He  thus  describes  her  to  'his  mother  when  announcing 
his  engagement :  — 

**  Without  flying  into  raptures,  —  for  I  must  assure  you  that 
my  judgment  as  well  as  my  affections  are  consulted  upon 
this  occasion,  —  without  flying  into  raptures,  then,  I  may 
safely  assure  you  that  her  temper  is  sweet  and  cheerful,  her 
understanding  good,  and,  what  I  know  will  give  you  pleas- 
ure, her  principles  of  religion  very  serious.  Her  fortune  is 
five  hundred  pounds  a  year." 

These  are  a  few  extracts  from  Miss  Carpenter's  let- 
ters :  — 

"  Before  I  conclude  this  famous  epistle  I  will  give  you  a 
litde  hint,  —  that  is,  not  to  put  so  many  'musts'  in  your 
letters,  it  is  beginning  rather  too  soon ;  and  another  thing 
is  that  I  take  the  Hberty  not  to  mind  them  much,  but  I  ex- 
pect you  to  mind  me.  You  must  take  care  of  yourself  ;  you 
must  think  of  me  and  believe  me  yours  sincerely.  ...  I  am 
very  glad  that  you  don't  give  up  the  cavalry,  as  I  love  any- 
thing that  is  stylish.  Don't  forget  to  find  a  stand  for  the 
old  carriage,  as  I  shall  like  to  keep  it  in  case  we  have  to  go 


yo  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

a.  journey ;  it  will  do  very  well  until  we  can  keep  our  car- 
riage. What  an  idea  of  yours  was  that  to  mention  where 
you  wish  to  have  your  bones  laid !  If  you  were  married  I 
should  think  you  had  tired  of  me.  A  pretty  compliment  be- 
fore marriage!  If  you  always  have  those  cheerful  thoughts, 
how  very  pleasant  and  gay  you  must  be.  Adieu,  my  dearest 
friend.  Take  care  of  yourself  if  you  love  me,  as  I  have  no 
wish  that  you  should  visit  that  beautiful  and  romantic  scene, 
the  burial  place !  .  .  .  Arrange  it  so  that  we  shall  see  none 
of  your  family  the  night  of  our  arrival.  I  shall  be  so  tired, 
and  such  a  fright,  I  should  not  be  seen  to  advantage." 

All  of  which  reads  as  though  the  young  ladies  of  1797 
were  not  very  different  from  those  of  our  own  day.  After 
the  marriage  they  went  to  reside  in  Edinburgh,  and  en- 
joyed some  of  the  gayeties  of  that  time.  They  were  most 
particularly  attracted  by  the  theatres.  Mrs.  Scott  had  a 
great  fondness  for  the  shows  and  pomps  of  the  world,  as 
she  had  not  concealed  from  him  before  marriage,  and  she 
never  recovered  from  such  fondness  ;  but  she  accommo- 
dated herself  well  to  her  surroundings,  and  the  young 
couple  were  very  happy. 

In  18 14  "  Waverley  "  was  pubhshed,  and  received  wath 
wonder  and  delight  by  the  whole  reading  world.  "  Guy 
Mannering  "  followed  closely  upon  it,  and  was  said  to 
have  been  wTitten  in  six  weeks'  time.  It  intensified  the 
interest  already  aroused,  and  made  men  wonder  anew 
who  this  great  new  light  could  be.  The  tragical  "  Bride 
of  Lammermoor"  composed  at  white  heat  in  a  fortnight, 
added  greatly  to  the  sensation,  and  the  whole  country 
was  in  a  fever  of  excitement  over  the  creations  of  this 
enchanted  pen.  The  secret  of  the  authorship  of  the 
novels  was  kept  for  a  long  time  even  from  Scott's  intimate 
friends.  During  the  great  success  of  these  works,  Scott 
began  the  building  of  his  house  at  Abbotsford,  and  put 
into  the  vast  and  imposing  structure  so  much  money 
that  he  became  very  much  embarrassed  in  his  finances, 
and  the  serious  troubles  of  his  life  began.  The  extrav- 
agance of  his  outlay  upon  his  estate,  together  with  liabili- 


WALTER  SCOTT.  ^j 

ties  he  had  assumed  for  others,  led  finally  to  financial 
ruin,  to  overwork,  and  probably  to  premature  death.  Let 
us  make  a  few  extracts  from  his  diary  written  when  these 
misfortunes  were  fresh  upon  him. 

**  What  a  life  mine  has  been !  Half-educated,  almost 
wholly  neglected  or  left  to  myself ;  stuffing  my  head  with 
most  nonsensical  trash,  and  undervalued  by  the  most  of  my 
companions  for  a  time  ;  getting  forward,  and  held  to  be  a 
bold  and  clever  fellow,  contrary  to  the  opinion  of  all  who 
had  held  me  a  mere  dreamer ;  broken-hearted  for  two  years, 
my  heart  handsomely  pieced  again,  —  but  the  crack  will 
remain  till  my  dying  day.  Rich  and  poor  four  or  five  times  ; 
once  on  the  verge  of  ruin,  yet  opened  a  new  source  of  wealth 
almost  overflowing.  Now  to  be  broken  in  my  pitch  of  pride 
and  nearly  winged  (unless  good  news  should  come)  because 
London  chooses  to  be  in  an  uproar,  and  in  the  tumult  of 
bulls  and  bears  a  poor,  inoffensive  lion  like  myself  is  pushed 
to  the  wall.  Nobody  in  the  end  can  lose  a  penny  by  me, 
that  is  one  comfort.  I  have  the  satisfaction  to  recollect  that 
my  prosperity  has  been  of  advantage  to  many,  and  to  hope 
that  some  at  least  will  forgive  my  transient  wealth  on  ac- 
count of  the  innocence  of  my  intentions,  and  my  real  wish  to 
do  good  to  the  poor.  .  .  .  How  could  I  tread  my  hall  again 
with  such  a  diminished  crest?  How  live  a  poor,  indebted 
man,  where  I  was  once  the  wealthy,  the  honored  }  I  was 
to  have  gone  there  Saturday  in  joy  and  prosperity  to  receive 
my  friends.  My  dogs  will  wait  for  me  in  vain.  It  is  foolish, 
but  the  thoughts  of  parting  from  these  dumb  creatures  have 
moved  me  more  than  any  of  the  painful  reflections  I  have 
put  down.  Poor  things,  I  must  get  them  kind  masters.  I 
must  end  these  gloomy  forebodings,  or  I  shall  lose  the  tone 
of  mind  with  which  men  should  meet  distress.  I  feel  my 
dogs'  feet  on  my  knees  ;  I  hear  them  whining  and  seeking 
me  everywhere.  .  .  . 

"  I  feel  neither  dishonored  nor  broken  down  by  the  bad  — 
now  really  bad  —  news  I  have  received.  I  have  walked  my 
last  on  the  domains  I  have  planted  ;  sat  the  last  time  in  the 
halls  I  have  built.  But  death  would  have  taken  them  from 
me  if  misfortune  had  spared  them.  My  poor  people  whom 
I  loved  so  well !  There  is  just  another  die  to  turn  up  against 
me  in  this  run  of  ill-luck,  —  that  is,  if  I  should  break  my 


y2  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

magic   wand   in  the  fall  from  the  elephant,   and  lose   my 
popularity  with  my  fortune. 

"  Read  again  and  for  the  third  time  Miss  Austen's  story 
of  '  Pride  and  Prejudice.'  That  young  lady  has  a  talent  for 
describing  the  involvements,  the  feelings,  and  characters  of 
ordinary  life  which  is  to  me  the  most  wonderful  I  ever  met 
with.  The  Big  Bow-wow  strain  I  can  do  myself  Hke  any 
now  going,  but  the  exquisite  touch  which  renders  ordinary 
commonplace  things  interesting  is  denied  to  me." 

Troubles  had  indeed  come  thick  and  fast  upon  poor 
Scott,  and  the  heaviest  blow  was  yet  to  fall.  In  1826 
Lady  Scott  was  taken  from  him,  and  about  the  same  time 
a  number  of  his  old  friends.  He  felt  his  desolation 
extremely,  but  kept  up  bravely  for  the  most  part,  and 
worked  prodigiously  for  many  months.  There  is  a  gran- 
deur about  the  way  he  bore  his  misfortimes  which  casts 
into  shade  all  that  was  fine  in  his  character  during  his 
prosperous  years.  Most  men,  even  of  brave  and  noble 
natures,  would  have  been  overcome  by  misfortunes  so 
overwhelming  as  were  his,  and  would  never  have  thought 
of  extricating  themselves ;  but  he  seemed  to  rise  to  the 
occasion  in  a  quite  unexampled  manner,  and  to  fight  with 
the  utmost  bravery  and  fortitude  to  the  last.  The  wound 
to  his  affections  was,  however,  very  hard  to  recover  from, 
and  he  broke  more  rapidly  after  Lady  Scott's  death  than 
ever  before.     He  wTites  :  — 

"  A  kind  of  cloud  of  stupidity  hangs  about  me,  as  if  all 
were  unreal  that  men  seem  to  be  doing  and  talking  about." 

After  the  burial  he  writes  :  — 

*'  The  whole  scene  floats  as  a  sort  of  dream  before  me,  — 
the  beautiful  day,  the  gray  ruins  covered  and  hidden  among 
clouds  of  foliage,  where  the  grave  even  in  the  lap  of  beauty 
lay  lurking  and  gaping  for  its  prey.  Then  the  grave  looks, 
the  hasty,  important  bustle  of  the  men  with  spades  and 
mattocks,  the  train  of  carriages,  the  coffin  containing  the 
creature  that  was  so  long  the  dearest  on  earth  to  me,  and 
whom  I  was  to  consign  to  the  very  spot  which  in  pleasure 


WALTER  SCOTT.  ^3 

parties  we  so  frequently  visited.  It  seems  still  as  if  it  could 
not  be  really  so.  But  it  is  so,  and  duty  to  God  and  to  my 
children  must  teach  me  patience." 


His  pecuniary  troubles  were  greeted  with  the  liveliest 
sympathy  from  all  quarters.  The  Earl  of  Dudley  but 
voiced  the  general  thought  when  he  exclaimed,  on  first 
hearing  of  them  :  "  Scott  ruined  !  the  author  of  '  Waverley ' 
ruined  !  Good  God  !  Let  every  man  to  whom  he  has 
given  months  of  delight  give  him  a  sixpence,  and  he  will 
rise  to-morrow  morning  richer  than  Rothschild."  When, 
after  a  time,  he  rallied  and  went  on  a  journey  to  London, 
the  deep  sympathy  with  which  he  was  received,  and  the 
kindness  of  all  with  whom  he  associated,  cheered  his 
heart  a  great  deal,  and  he  went  back  to  his  unparalleled 
labors  quite  refreshed.  But  he  had  set  himself  a  task 
which  it  was  impossible  that  any  man  could  do,  and 
although  he  worked  himself  mercilessly  to  the  end,  he 
failed  of  accomplishing  it.  His  nervous  system  became 
completely  shattered,  and  he  had  several  strokes  of  paraly- 
sis ;  but  it  was  not  until  his  mind  also  began  to  fail  in 
serious  fashion  that  he  would  give  over  his  work.  He 
seemed  determined  to  die  a  free  man,  but  the  task  was 
too  prodigious.     He  labored  like  a  giant,  but  he  failed. 

The  record  of  those  closing  days  is  very  sad.  The 
pity  they  excite  is  too  deep  even  for  tears.  One  turns 
from  them  with  a  heavy  burden  at  the  heart,  which  nothing 
can  for  a  time  relieve.  The  only  comfort  is  that  he  was 
surrounded  by  the  kindest  and  tenderest  friends,  and  that 
he  bore  everything  which  came  to  him  with  unflinching 
fortitude  and  the  kindliest  spirit.  His  last  words  spoken 
to  Lockhart  are  characteristic  of  the  man  :  "  Be  a  good 
man,  my  dear ;  be  virtuous,  be  religious,  be  a  good  man. 
Nothing  else  will  give  you  any  comfort  when  you  come 
to  he  here."  There  is  nothing  in  the  record  of  Sir  Walter's 
lif  '"'^--'-i-  V  friend  would  wish  to  blot.  One  can  but 
cess  by  the  record  of  his  business  troubles, 
^ir  entanglements,  but  through  all  these 


^4  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

even,  his  character  glows  with  undiminished  brightness, 
and  we  love  him  ever  more  and  more.  He  was  a  man 
built  on  a  large  scale,  both  in  intellect  and  heart,  and, 
although  he  doubtless  had  his  failings,  there  is  little  that 
is  recorded  of  him  that  detracts  in  any  way  from  his  in- 
nate nobility.  Such  a  funeral  as  his  has  seldom  been 
witnessed, 

"  The  court-yard  and  all  the  precincts  of  Abbotsford  were 
crowded  with  uncovered  spectators  as  the  procession  was 
arranged  ;  and  as  it  advanced  through  Darnick  and  Melrose, 
and  the  adjacent  villages,  the  whole  population  appeared  at 
their  doors  in  Hke  manner,  —  almost  all  in  black.  The  train 
of  carriages  extended  more  than  a  mile ;  the  yeomanry  fol- 
lowed in  great  numbers  on  horseback,  and  it  was  late  in 
the  day  ere  we  reached  Dryburg.  Some  accident,  it  was 
observed,  had  caused  the  hearse  to  halt  for  several  minutes 
on  the  summit  of  the  hill  at  Bemerside,  —  exactly  where 
a  prospect  of  remarkable  richness  opens,  and  where  Sir 
Walter  had  always  been  accustomed  to  rein  up  his  horse. 
The  day  was  dark  and  lowering,  and  the  wind  high.  The 
wide  enclosure  at  the  Abbey  of  Dryburg  was  thronged  with 
old  and  young ;  and  when  the  coffin  was  taken  from  the 
hearse  and  again  laid  on  the  shoulders  of  the  afflicted 
serving-men,  one  deep  sob  burst  from  a  thousand  lips." 

The  heart  of  Scotland  was  broken  at  her  great  loss. 
And  well  might  she  mourn.  The  sceptre  which  the 
great  Wizard  of  the  North  had  so  long  held  was  broken, 
and  no  successor  has  yet  risen  to  uphold  the  fame  of 
Auld  Scotia.  Nor  will  a  successor  arise.  No  hand  like 
his  will  ever  touch  the  harp  of  his  native  land ;  no  strains 
such  as  he  evoked  ever  again  sound  through  the  rocky 
glens  and  passes,  and  echo  from  the  mountain-heights 
of  Scotland. 


CHARLES   LAMB. 


IF  there  is  a  tender  and  touching  story  in  all  the  annals 
of  genius,  it  is  surely  the  life-history  of  Charles  Lamb. 
Search  where  we  will,  there  is  nothing  to  equal  the  pathos 
of  this  gentle  and  lovable  Hfe.  Nowhere  else  can  we  find 
a  record  of  such  deep  devotion,  such  heroic  endurance, 
such  uncomplaining  suffering,  such  geniality  and  cheerful- 
ness under  almost  unbearable  burdens.  The  world  ad- 
mires many  of  its  men  of  letters,  —  it  loves  Charles  Lamb. 
Save  Carlyle's,  no  voice  among  all  his  literary  brethren  has 
ever  said  a  bitter  or  an  unkind  word  of  the  gende  humor- 
ist. And  when  we  compare  the  lives  of  the  two  men,  how 
brightly  glows  the  page  whereon  is  written  the  record  of 
Lamb's  untiring  and  unselfish  love,  exacting  nothing  for 
himself,  but  giving  all  with  lavish  prodigality,  compared 
with  the  pages  given  to  the  account  of  the  selfish  and  ex- 
acting life  which  Carlyle  lived  with  the  woman  who  was 
his  wife,  and  whom  he  really  loved,  but  over  whom  he 
tyrannized  in  so  petty  a  manner  !  Carlyle's  characteriza- 
tion of  Lamb  is  really  the  most  damaging  thing  to  himself 
of  the  many  bitter  and  biting  sarcasms  which  he  has  left 
in  regard  to  the  men  and  women  of  his  day.  That  he  did 
not  know  Lamb  —  had  not  the  slightest  appreciation  of 
the  man  —  is  evident  at  a  glance.  And  perhaps  this  is  not 
to  be  so  much  wondered  at,  for  there  was  very  little  in 
common  between  the  two ;  but  it  does  seem  that  some 
hint  of  the  heroism  of  Lamb's  apparently  commonplace 


76  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

and  perhaps  vulgar  life  might  have  penetrated  even  to  the 
heart  of  the  crusty  Scotchman,  for  he  could  not  have  been 
ignorant  of  the  tragic  life-story  of  gentle  Elia. 

They  were  very  humble  people,  the  Lambs,  —  poor  and 
obscure,  and  unfortunate  to  a  degree.  No  pretensions  to 
gentility  had  ever  been  in  the  family,  but  an  acceptance  of 
their  commonplace  lot,  with  little  striving  for  higher  things. 
There  was  something  more,  too,  than  poverty  and  obscu- 
rity and  vulgarity  in  their  antecedents ;  a  fearful  curse 
was  in  the  family,  the  heritage  of  almost  every  genera- 
tion,—  the  curse  of  madness.  What  the  contemplation 
of  this  frightful  inheritance  must  have  been  to  a  youth  like 
Charles  Lamb,  gifted  with  the  fatal  sensibility  of  genius, 
and  endowed  with  that  imagination  which  can  conceive 
of  a  horror  before  it  falls,  we  can  form  some  sort  of  con- 
ception, but  probably  a  very  vague  and  inadequate  one 
indeed. 

The  family  were  very  poor,  living  in  humble  lodgings. 
The  father  was  in  his  dotage,  the  mother  was  a  paralytic, 
and  Charles  with  his  pen,  and  his  sister  Mary  with  her 
needle,  worked  to  support  the  family.  They  both  over- 
worked themselves  fearfully,  and  lived  in  apprehension  of 
the  doom  which  hung  over  them.  They  were  very  fondly 
attached  to  each  other,  and  the  only  pleasure  they  had  in 
their  cheerless  youth  was  their  intercourse.  They  were 
both  gifted,  and  of  gentle  and  kind  disposition,  and  their 
affection  for  each  other  was  more  sympathetic  and  filled 
with  a  deeper  insight  into  each  other's  characters  and 
feelings  than  is  common  between  brothers  and  sisters. 
\\\  little  intervals  between  their  varied  labors  they  wrote 
and  read  to  each  other  many  things  which  would  have 
a  rare  value  in  these  days  had  they  been  preserved ;  and 
this,  with  wandering  together  through  the  streets  in  the 
evenings  and  looking  at  the  outside  of  the  theatres,  seems 
to  have  constituted  their  only  youthful  pleasure.  At  the 
age  of  twenty-one  Charles  showed  symptoms  of  the  family 
curse,  and  his  sister  herself  almost  lost  her  reason  in  un- 
availing sorrow  over  his  condition.     So  young,  so  gifted, 


CHARLES  LAMB. 


77 


and  threatened  with  such  dread  disaster,  —  his  loving 
Mary  could  not  have  it  so.  She  even  rebelled  against 
Heaven  in  the  extreme  of  her  agony,  and  called  upon 
God  to  relieve  them  both  from  such  ill-fated  life.  But  all 
her  prayers  and  tears  and  rebellious  risings  up  against 
destiny  did  not  avail,  and  Charles  was  placed  in  a  mad- 
house, where  he  passed  a  portion  of  the  year  1796.  In 
one  of  his  lucid  intervals  he  wrote  a  sonnet,  "  Mary,  to 
thee,  my  sister,  and  my  friend,"  which  is  a  touching  and 
tender  tribute  to  her  love.  Long  afterward  he  was  able 
to  write  of  the  experience  quite  cheerfully  :  — 

"  I  look  back  upon  it  at  times  with  a  gloomy  kind  of 
envy ;  for  while  it  lasted  I  had  many,  many  hours  of  pure 
happiness.  Dream  not,  Coleridge,  of  having  tasted  all  the 
grandeur  and  wildness  of  fancy  till  you  have  gone  mad  ! " 

But  there  is  a  painful  commentary  upon  the  bitterness 
of  after-hfe  to  him  in  the  thought  that  he  could  look  back 
upon  this  dreadful  season  as  a  period  when  he  had  some 
happiness.  The  attack  in  his  case  was  of  brief  duration, 
and  it  never  recurred,  which,  considering  all  the  sorrows 
and  all  the  irregularities  of  his  Hfe,  seems  remarkable. 
He  had  not  been  long  in  a  condition  to  be  responsible 
when  the  tragedy  took  place  which  cast  its  blight  upon 
his  life.  In  September  of  the  year  1796  Mary  Lamb, 
"  worn  down  to  a  state  of  extreme  nervous  misery  by  at- 
tention to  needle-work  all  day  and  by  watching  with  her 
mother  at  night,  broke  into  uncontrollable  insanity,  and 
seizing  a  knife  from  the  table  spread  for  dinner,  stabbed 
her  mother  to  the  heart.  The  coroner's  jury  brought  in  a 
verdict  of  lunacy."     Charles  writes  to  Coleridge  :  — 

"With  me  the  former  things  are  passed  away,  and  I  have 
something  more  to  do  than  to  feel,  God  Almighty  has  us 
well  in  his  keeping." 

The  horror  of  the  event  made  so  deep  an  impression 
upon  his  mind  that  he  thought  he  never  fully  recovered 
from  it.  For  many,  many  years  it  hung  over  him  like  a 
pall,  casting  a  sort  of  despairing  darkness  over  ail  that 


78  HOME  LIFE  OF  GREA  T  A  UTHORS. 

might  have  been  bright  in  Hfe.  Think  of  that  tender  and 
sensitive  soul  in  the  awful  solitude  of  the  nights  which 
followed  the  tragedy :  the  sister  he  loved  removed  from 
him  to  an  asylum ;  the  mother  sleeping  in  her  unhonored 
grave ;  the  father,  worse  than  dead,  in  almost  drivelling 
idiocy,  to  be  cared  for  at  his  hands ;  the  awful  doom  of 
the  family  ever  hanging  over  his  own  head,  —  what  depths 
of  passionate  sorrow  must  he  have  waded  through  in  those 
bitter  hours,  what  unavailing  tears  he  must  have  shed, 
what  rebellious  thoughts  may  there  not  have  been  in  his 
heart ! 

But  he  kept  a  cheerful  front,  and  went  about  his  daily 
toil,  as  he  needs  must,  with  as  little  outward  show  of  pain 
as  possible. 

Mary  soon  grew  better,  and  he  exerted  himself  to  have 
her  released  from  confinement.  He  succeeded  in  doing 
so  by  entering  into  a  solemn  agreement  to  make  her  his 
charge  for  life,  and  to  watch  over  her  that  she  should  do 
no  harm.  When  she  was  returned  to  him  he  was  almost 
happy  again,  in  spite  of  the  shadow  caused  by  the  memory 
of  what  had  happened,  as  well  as  by  the  uncertainty  of  the 
future.  He  had  but  one  hundred  pounds  a  year  from  his 
clerkship,  and  there  was  a  maiden  aunt  as  well  as  the 
father  to  be  cared  for.     But  he  says  cheerfully :  — 

**  If  my  father,  my  aunt,  my  sister,  and  an  old  maid  ser- 
vant cannot  live  comfortably  on  one  hundred  and  twenty  or 
one  hundred  and  thirty  pounds  a  year,  we  ought  to  burn  by 
slow  fires ;  and  I  almost  would,  that  Mary  might  not  go  to  a 
hospital," 

And  he  hoped  to  earn  the  twenty  or  thirty  pounds  by 
hterature.  His  father  had  to  be  amused  by  cribbage  ;  and 
many  were  the  weary  hours  that  Charles  would  sit  playing 
with  him,  to  the  neglect  of  his  correspondence,  his  friends, 
the  thousand-and-one  private  interests  which  filled  up  his 
little  leisure.  Sometimes  he  would  try  to  be  let  off,  but 
the  old  man  would  say,  reproachfully,  "  If  you  won't  play 
with  me,  you  might  as  well  not  come  home  at  all ; "  and 


CHARLES  LAMB. 


79 


the  dutiful  son  set  to  afresh.  There  is  a  sort  of  heroism 
in  this  which  only  those  people  can  appreciate  who  really 
value  their  time.  These  people  will  give  all  else  cheer- 
fully^ —  money,  strength,  the  heart's  deep  devotion,  —  but 
they  give  very  grudgingly  their  precious  moments ;  they 
feel  as  though  they  were  being  robbed  in  every  hour  thus 
lost.  Oh,  the  agony  of  impatience  !  oh,  the  restlessness 
of  the  fever  which  consumes  them  when  they  feel  the 
moments  fleeing  away,  and  the  unconscious  thief  perhaps 
deriving  little  pleasure  or  profit  from  the  loss  !  Rebellion 
against  fate  is  often  a  virtue  under  such  circumstances ; 
and  we  are  inclined  to  think  it  would  have  been  so  in  the 
case  of  poor  Elia,  even  though  the  poor  old  man  should 
have  gone  to  his  grave  with  a  few  less  games  of  cribbage 
recorded  against  him. 

Think  of  the  delicious  essays  which  might  have  been 
written  in  those  misspent  hours,  in  those  days  of  youth 
when  Elia  was  at  his  best,  before  the  sorrowful  touches  of 
Time  had  been  left  upon  his  genius  j  think  of  the  exqui- 
site letters  his  friends  might  have  received,  and  which 
would  have  enriched  all  the  coming  time ;  think  of  the 
inimitable  drolleries  which  would  have  sent  a  smile  over 
the  face  of  the  world ;  think  of  the  little  pathetic  touches 
he  would  have  given  in  sketches  of  characteristic  humor, 
all  with  the  freshness  of  his  dawn  upon  them,  —  and 
mourn,  O  world  of  letters,  for  your  loss  !  But  the  old 
man,  —  he  for  whom  the  light  had  gone  out  in  dark- 
ness ;  over  whose  brain  the  cobwebs  had  been  woven ; 
who  had  no  joy  in  the  great  things  of  this  life ;  who  saw 
no  beauty  or  splendor  in  the  outer  world ;  who  had  no 
treasure  in  the  world  of  thought ;  who  could  not  be  stirred 
again  by  any  of  the  absorbing  passions  of  life  ;  who  knew 
no  love,  no  hate,  no  ambition,  no  great  impulse  to  do  or 
to  dare ;  who  could  not  enter  into  the  realm  of  books  or 
art  or  music ;  who  had  not  even  a  friend  in  all  the  uni- 
verse of  God  j  think  of  the  old  man  who  had  only  this 
one  thing,  —  cards,  —  and  pause  a  moment  before  you 
say  that  gentle  Elia  did  not  well. 


8o  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

Finally  the  old  man,  too,  went  his  way,  and  there  were 
only  Charles  and  Mary  left.  He  had  long  since  given  up 
the  hope  of  there  being  a  third  in  their  life-drama,  al- 
though there  had  been  one  to  whom  his  heart  was  given, 
and  whose  presence  had  been  with  him  always,  even  in 
his  days  of  madness,  —  sweet  Alice  W.,  as  he  always  called 
her,  but  of  whom  the  world  has  lost  all  trace  save  this, 
that  she  was  Charles  Lamb's  early  and  only  love,  and  that 
he  treasured  her  memory  until  all  were  gone,  "  the  old 
familiar  faces."  Long  after  she  was  married  to  another, 
Lamb  used  to  be  seen  at  evening  pacing  up  and  down  in 
front  of  her  house,  hoping  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  her 
through  the  windows.  But  after  he  had  taken  Mary  to  be 
his  charge  it  was  impossible  to  think  of  marriage.  He 
could  not  ask  another  to  share  his  sad  vigils  with  the  af- 
flicted sister,  nor  hope  that  another  would  look  upon  her 
with  his  eyes ;  so  he  buried  his  romance  out  of  sight,  and 
never  turned  to  that  phase  of  a  man's  life  again.  At 
twenty-two  one  does  not  easily  give  up  the  thoughts  of 
love,  or  the  hopes  of  home  with  wife  and  children,  —  and 
Charles  had  his  struggle,  as  any  strong  man  would  have 
had;  but  he  conquered  himself  once  again,  and  went 
bravely  on.  Day  by  day  he  toiled  at  the  India  House, 
never  losing  time,  never  taking  a  vacation,  ever  at  his 
post  till  he  was  fifty  years  old,  when  he  "came  home 
forever." 

During  those  thirty  years  of  steady  toil  he  went  through 
many  sad  experiences  with  Mary ;  but  he  must  earn  their 
daily  bread,  and  he  never  left  his  post.  Many  were  the 
nights  he  spent  in  anxious  watchings  with  her,  —  for  she 
had  periodical  returns  of  her  insanity  during  all  this  time, 
— when,  sleepless  and  harassed  to  the  point  of  exhaustion 
with  her  dangerous  vagaries,  he  must  still  rise  in  the  morn- 
ing and  go  to  his  desk.  Many  were  the  days  when  he  ran 
in  hot  haste  the  moment  he  was  released,  to  see  that  she 
was  still  safe  ;  even  many  hand-to-hand  encounters  he  had 
with  her  in  her  dangerous  hours,  —  but  no  murmur  ever 
escaped  his  lips  at  all  this.     When  she  became  very  bad 


CHARLES  LAMB.  8 1 

he  took  her  back  to  the  asylum,  and  she  remained  some- 
times for  weeks,  sometimes  for  months ;  but  he  always 
eagerly  reclaimed  her  the  moment  she  was  better.  He 
took  her  with  him  on  little  journeys,  —  a  strait-jacket  al- 
ways safely  packed  in  her  portmanteau  by  herself,  —  and 
one  time  she  went  mad  while  they  were  travelling  in  the 
diligence  and  far  from  home.  Often  he  ^vrote  to  their 
friends  in  the  later  days,  when  he  had  become  somewhat 
famous  and  friends  had  grown  plenty,  to  apologize  for 
not  keeping  engagements  or  accepting  invitations,  ''My 
sister  is  taken  ill."     As  George  W.  Curtis  once  wrote, — 

"In  those  few  words  how  much  tragedy  lies  hidden! 
What  a  life  of  patient  heroism  do  they  suggest  !  —  in  compar- 
ison with  which  the  career  of  Lamb's  huge  contemporary, 
Bonaparte,  shrinks  into  the  meanest  melodrama ;  while  the 
misanthropic  mouthings  of  Lord  Byron  become  maudlin 
when  we  recall  the  sweet,  life-long,  heroic  silence  of  Charles 
Lamb." 

"What  sad,  large  pieces  it  cuts  out  of  hfe,"  Lamb 
writes  in  1809,  —  ''out  of  her  life,  who  is  getting  rather 
old ;  and  we  may  not  have  many  years  to  live  together." 
Once  again  when  she  was  in  confinement  he  writes  :  — 

"  It  cuts  out  great  slices  of  the  time  —  the  little  time  —  we 
shall  have  to  live  together.  But  I  won't  talk  of  death ;  I 
will  imagine  us  immortal,  or  forget  that  we  are  otherwise. 
By  God's  blessing,  in  a  few  weeks  we  may  be  taking  our 
meal  together,  or  sitting  in  the  front  row  of  the  pit  at  Drury 
Lane,  or  taking  our  evening  walk  past  the  theatres,  to  look 
at  the  outside  of  them  at  least,  if  not  to  be  tempted  in. 
Then  we  forget  that  we  are  assailable  ;  we  are  strong  for  the 
time  as  rocks,  —  the  wind  is  tempered  to  the  shorn  Lambs." 

Then  away  on  in  1833  he  writes  to  Wordsworth  :  — 

"  Mary  is  ill  again.  Her  illnesses  encroach  yearly.  The 
last  was  three  months,  followed  by  two  of  depression  most 
dreadful.  ...  I  look  back  upon  her  earlier  attacks  with 
longing,  — nice  little  durations  of  six  weeks  or  so,  followed  by 
complete  restoration,  — shocking  as  they  were  to  me  then." 

6 


82  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

This  sister  was  a  woman  quite  worthy  of  his  devotion. 
Possessed  of  genius  somewhat  akin  to  that  of  her  brother, 
she  also  handled  a  delicate  pen,  and  but  for  her  misfor- 
tune would  have  been  well  known  in  the  world  of  books. 
She  was  in  complete  sympathy  with  her  brother,  in  heart 
as  well  as  in  mind.  And  the  record  of  their  lives  is  one 
of  the  most  beautiful  pictures  of  brotherly  and  sisterly 
affection  in  all  literature. 

Let  us  turn  from  the  dark  picture,  and  see  some  of  the 
brighter  sides  of  this  life,  sketched  so  far  in  Rembrandt- 
like color.  Throughout  all  this  darkness  and  dread,  he 
had  joked  and  jested  his  way  on,  amusing  his  friends  in 
private,  and  entertaining  the  world  of  letters  by  his  genial 
humor.  It  welled  up  as  from  a  hidden  fountain,  and  that 
fountain  never  failed  but  with  life.  So  easily  and  sponta- 
neously did  it  flow,  that  if  he  wanted  an  order  to  see  the 
play,  for  some  friends,  he  would  scribble  something  like 
this  to  Ayrton  :  — 

"  I  would  go  to  the  play 
In  a  ver\-  economical  sort  of  a  way, 

Rather  to  see 

Than  be  seen; 
Though  I  'm  no  ill  sight 

Neither  — 

By  candle-light, 
And  in  some  kinds  of  weather, 
You  might  pit  me  for  height 

Against  Kean  ; 
But  in  a  grand  tragic  scene 

I  'm  nothing. 
It  would  create  a  kind  of  loathing 

To  see  me  act  Hamlet ; 
There  'd  be  many  a  damn  let 

Fly 
At  my  presumption, 

If  I  should  try,  — 
Being  a  fellow  of  no  gumption." 

And  so  on  through  half  a  dozen  verses  of  exquisite 
nonsense.  And  in  every  little  note  to  his  many  friends 
there  was  always  some  characteristic  touch  to  excite  their 
ready  smiles  ;  as  in  the  note  to  Coleridge,  who  had  carried 


CHARLES  LAMB.  2>7, 

off  some  of  his  books  :  —  "  There  is  a  devihsh  gap  in  my 
shelf  where  you  have  knocked  out  the  two  eye-teeth,"  and 
where  he  goes  on  to  beg  him  in  a  whimsical  way  to  return 
them  —  because,  although  he  had  himself  borrowed  them 
of  somebody  else,  they  had  long  adorned  his  shelf  Truly, 
most  people  who  own  books  at  all  can  sympathize  with 
Lamb  in  this,  though  they  may  think  he  got  off  lighdy  to 
have  only  the  two  eye-teeth  knocked  out.  We  have 
known  of  cases  where  cuspids,  bicuspids,  and  molars 
have  all  been  extracted.  These  letters  are  all  exquisitely 
droll,  the  most  of  them  containing  a  gentle  oath  or  two, 

as  where  he  wrote  "  Some  d d  people  have  come  in, 

and  I  must  stop  ;  "  and  then  recollecting  that  he  was  writ- 
ing to  a  "  proper  "  person,  making  a  postscript  which  says, 

"when  I  wrote  d d  I  only  meant  deuced."     But  one 

would  as  soon  think  of  dropping  out  Shakspeare's  adjec- 
tive, and  saying  (as  a  very  prim  lady  we  once  knew  did 
in  reading  Lady  Macbeth's  soliloquy),  "  Out,  spot !  "  as  to 
drop  out  any  of  Lamb's  qualifying  words.  He  was  some- 
times accused  of  being  irreverent,  as  in  his  article  upon 
"  Saying  Graces,"  where  he  affirms  that  he  is  more  dis- 
posed to  say  grace  upon  twenty  otlier  occasions  in  the 
course  of  the  day  than  before  his  dinner,  and  inquires 
why  not  say  them  over  books,  those  spiritual  repasts. 
But  he  was  very  far  indeed  from  being  irreverent,  and 
had  much  of  genuine  religious  feeling. 

His  hospitality  was  unbounded,  and  the  evenings  at  his 
home  have  become  as  well  known  in  literature  as  the 
grand  evenings  at  Holland  House. 

His  friends  were  the  first  literary  men  of  the  day,  — 
Wordsworth,  Leigh  Hunt,  Barry  Cornwall,  Talfourd,  Haz- 
litt,  Southey,  Coleridge,  —  all  the  giants  of  that  day  and 
generation,  and  he  was  loved  by  them  all.  Not  that  they 
did  not  know  and  deplore  his  faults,  —  or  his  one  fault ; 
for  if  he  could  have  conquered  his  fondness  for  wine  he 
would  have  had  none  of  much  moment  left.  But  even 
this  was  overlooked  by  his  fiiends  at  the  time,  and  has  not 
been  considered  as  entirely  inexcusable  by  posterity.    That 


84  HOME  LIFE  OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

he  smoked  much  and  drank  hard,  even  for  that  day,  may 
be  true ;  but  it  can  scarcely  justify  the  bitter  sneers  of  Car- 
lyle,  or  the  holding  of  him  up  as  an  awful  warning  without 
putting  in  any  plea  in  mitigation,  as  is  sometimes  done  by 
severe  moralists  in  our  own  day.  He  abased  himself  in 
awful  shame  over  it  many  a  time  in  life,  and  suffered  in 
his  own  person  all  the  fearful  retribution  which  such  hab- 
its bring  in  their  train.  Let  this  be  sufficient  for  us,  and 
let  us  but  pity  and  pass  on.  One  of  the  most  beautiful 
things  in  his  later  life  was  his  fatherly  tenderness  toward  a 
friendless  young  girl  whom  he  and  Mary  had  befriended 
and  finally  adopted,  —  Emma  Isola,  who  was  afterwards 
married  to  Moxon,  the  pubHsher.  He  was  extremely 
fond  of  her,  and  she  brightened  his  home  much  in  the 
later  years,  although  she  married  before  his  death.  It  is 
sad  to  think  that  he  should  have  died  before  his  sister. 
He  had  often  prayed  that  this  might  not  be.  But  he  pro- 
vided for  her  tenderly,  and  gave  her  to  the  care  of  his 
friends. 

Lamb  is  described  as  having  a  face  of  "  quivering  sweet- 
ness, nervous,  tremulous,  and  so  slight  of  frame  that  he 
looked  only  fit  for  the  most  placid  fortune." 

Fit  or  not,  he  had  to  contend  with  the  hardest  thing 
a  man  can  have  in  life,  —  he  had  to  live  a  life-long  wit- 
ness of  the  sufferings  of  one  he  dearly  loved,  and  whom 
he  was  entirely  powerless  to  help,  the  daily  and  hourly 
pathos  of  whose  sufferings  he  was  fitted  to  appreciate 
keenly,  and  for  whom  in  all  this  wide  weltering  chaos  of  a 
world  there  was  no  hope.  He  renounced  everything  else 
in  life  to  try  to  mitigate  this  dreadful  lot.  His  kindness 
was  unceasing,  his  pity  was  both  fatherly  and  motherly ; 
it  was  more,  —  Godlike ;  and  yet  it  was  of  small  avail. 
He  toiled  physically  that  she  might  live  at  ease.  He  ex- 
erted his  mind  constantly  when  in  her  presence,  that  she 
might  be  cheerful.  He  watched  over  her  with  the  ten- 
derness of  both  brother  and  lover ;  and  this  shall  be  his 
justification,  if  he  needs  one  :  he  loved  much. 


CHRISTOPHER   NORTH. 


HAZLITT  has  a  long  paper  "  On  Persons  One  would 
Wish  to  have  Seen."  And  surely,  if  he  had  lived 
at  this  time,  he  would  have  added  genial  and  lovable  Kit 
North  to  the  list  of  those  thus  honored.  There  are  few 
of  those  who  belonged  to  his  day  and  generation  to  whom 
we  should  have  a  stronger  wish  to  be  presented,  than  to 
Wilson,  —  the  student,  the  Bohemian,  the  bookworm,  the 
sportsman,  the  professor,  the  kindhest,  merriest,  and  most 
entertaining  of  genial  companions,  —  the  great  hero  of  the 
"  Noctes  Ambrosianae." 

Not  even  Lamb  —  the  quaint  and  merry  companion,  so 
full  of  quips  and  puns  that  laughter  lingered  with  any 
company  he  graced  with  his  pathetic  little  body  and 
quizzical  countenance  —  could  rival  Christopher  as  a 
fountain  of  merriment  and  eternal  good-cheer.  His  hu- 
mor was  not  quiet  and  subtle  like  Lamb's,  but  broad, 
rich,  bordering  on  farce,  and  of  "  imagination  all  com- 
pact." And  Lamb  could  by  no  means  rival  him  in  splen- 
dor of  description,  vivacity  of  retort,  energy  of  criticism, 
or  in  riotous  and  uproarious  mirth.  De  Quincey  alone 
could  match  the  splendor  of  his  diction  when  describing 
outward  sights  and  sounds,  and  De  Quincey  had  not  a 
tithe  of  his  intense  love  of  Nature,  and  appreciation  of 
her  glory  and  magnificence.  Ruskin  alone  equals  him 
in  this,  and  he  scarcely  reaches  the  height  of  rhetorical 
eloquence  to  which  Wilson  soars  so  easily. 


86  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

In  these  same  "  Noctes  "  we  have  descriptions  of  some 
of  those  nights  when,  as  Carlyle  would  have  said,  "  there 
was  much  good  talk."  And  Wilson  was  mainly  the  talker. 
The  chief  characteristic  of  his  discourse  was  its  prodi- 
gality of  humor  and  its  infinite  variety.  His  imagination 
too  ran  riot,  and  his  wit  sparkled  ever  and  anon  with  a 
radiance  all  its  own. 

His  memory  was  prodigious,  and  in  his  conversation 
he  taxed  it  for  anecdotes  and  illustrations  drawn  from  the 
four  quarters  of  the  globe,  and  from  the  most  remote  and 
unusual  stores  of  literary  hoarding.  His  mind  was  many- 
sided  as  well  as  keen,  and  he  kept  all  his  faculties  in  full 
play,  not  excepting  his  sympathies,  which  were  as  broad 
as  the  world  of  men. 

Can  we  wonder  that  those  who  crowded  the  table  where 
he  sat,  lingered  on  till  the  daylight  drove  them  from  the 
board?  or  that  no  man  who  had  had  him  for  a  boon 
companion  could  ever  be  satisfied  with  another?  Can 
we  wonder  that  the  students  who  crowded  his  lecture- 
room  after  he  became  a  professor  thought  every  other 
lecturer  commonplace  and  dull?  Not  that  he  gave  them 
more  information  than  others  —  perhaps  he  did  not  give 
them  as  much ;  but  he  excited  and  inspired  them.  He 
quickened  their  minds,  and  wakened  their  dormant  facul- 
ties. Some  of  the  white  heat  of  his  own  enthusiasm  he 
communicated  to  their  colder  natures,  and  they  enjoyed 
the  unusual  warmth.  Those  who  listened  to  those  won- 
derful discourses  can  never  be  persuaded  that  eloquence 
did  not  die  with  Christopher  North.  They  were  all  ad- 
dressed to  the  hearts  of  his  listeners,  and  thrills,  and  tears, 
and  laughter  that  was  not  loud  but  deep,  accompanied 
his  speech  from  the  beginning  to  the  very  end.  Let 
one  who  thus  listened  to  him  speak  :  — 

"We  have  heard  him  in  the  assembly-rooms,  speaking 
on  the  genius  of  Scott,  a  little  after  the  death  of  the  Wizard, 
and  in  the  tremble  of  his  deep  voice  could  read  his  sorrow 
for  the  personal  loss,  as  well  as  his  enthusiasm  for  the  univer- 
sal genius.     We  have  heard  him  in  his  class-room,  in  those 


CHRISTOPHER  NORTH.  87 

wild  and  wailing  cadences,  which  no  description  can  ade- 
quately re-echo,  in  those  long,  deep-drawn,  slowly  expiring 
sounds,  which  now  resembled  the  moanings  of  a  forsaken 
cataract,  and  now  seemed  to  come  hoarse  and  hollow  from 
the  chambers  of  the  thunder,  advocating  the  immortality  of 
the  soul,  describing  Caesar  weeping  at  the  grave  of  Alexan- 
der, repeating,  with  an  energy  which  might  have  raised  the 
dead,  Scott's  lines  on  the  landing  of  the  British  in  Portugal, 
and  discovering  the  secret  springs  of  laughter,  beauty,  sub- 
limity, and  terror,  to  audiences  whom  he  melted,  electrified, 
subdued,  solemnized,  exploded  into  mirth,  or  awed  into  si- 
lence, at  his  pleasure." 

His  eloquence  gained  little  from  his  personal  appear- 
ance, about  which  there  was  something  savage,  leonine, 
massive,  but  little  that  was  refined  or  attractive  in  the 
usual  sense  of  that  word.  Still  his  face  is  described  by 
some  as  magnificent,  and  his  gray,  flashing  eyes,  as  being 
remarkably  expressive.  In  his  dress  he  was  exceedingly 
slovenly  except  upon  state  occasions.  His  professor's- 
gown,  as  he  stalked  along  the  college-terraces,  flew  in 
tattered  stripes  behind  him,  his  shirts  were  usually  but- 
tonless,  and  his  hat  like  a  reminiscence  of  a  pre-historic 
age.  His  yellow  hair  always  floated  over  his  shoulders, 
in  confusion  worse  confounded,  and  he  wore  immense 
unkempt  whiskers  hanging  upon  his  breast.  Dickens 
thus  describes  him  :  — 

"  At  his  heels  followed  a  wiry,  sharp-eyed  shaggy  devil  of  a 
terrier,  dogging  his  steps  as  he  went  slashing  up  and  down, 
now  with  one  man  beside  him,  now  with  another,  and  now 
quite  alone,  but  always  at  a  fast  rolling  pace,  with  his  head 
in  the  air,  and  his  eyes  as  wide  open  as  he  could  get  them. 
A  bright,  clear-complexioned,  mountain-looking  fellow,  he 
looks  as  if  he  had  just  come  down  from  the  Highlands,  and 
had  never  taken  a  pen  in  hand." 

His  carelessness  of  appearances  extended  to  his  rooms, 
which  looked  like  small  sections  from  the  primeval  chaos. 
The  book-shelves  were  of  unpainted  wood,  knocked  to- 
gether in  the  rudest  fashion,  and  the  books  were  many 


88  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

of  them  tattered  and  \vithout  backs.  A  case  containing 
foreign  birds  was  used  also  as  a  wardrobe,  and  all  of  his 
rare  possessions  in  natural  history  were  mixed  up  with  a 
most  motley  collection  of  books  and  papers,  —  these  lat- 
ter consisting  of  all  sorts  of  scraps,  of  which  no  one  else 
could  have  made  anything.  He  always  seemed  to  be 
able  to  find  them  when  wanted,  even  in  the  worst  con- 
fusion ;  but  how  he  did  it  was  a  mystery  to  his  friends. 
"  Here  and  there,  in  the  interstices  between  books,  were 
stuffed  what  appeared  to  be  dingy,  crumpled  bits  of 
paper,  but  they  were  in  reality  bank-notes,  his  class  fees  \ 
which  he  never  carried  in  a  purse,  but  stuffed  away  wher- 
ever it  seemed  most  convenient  at  the  moment."  He 
never,  even  in  the  coldest  weather,  had  a  fire  in  his  room. 

No  account  of  Kit  North  would  be  complete  that  left 
out  entirely  the  convivialities  of  the  table,  though  we 
should  make  a  great  mistake  if  we  took  the  humorous 
caricatures  of  the  "Noctes  Ambrosianse"  for  accounts  of 
literal  feats  in  that  line.  This  has  sometimes  been  done, 
and  he  is  frequently  represented  as  a  glutton  and  a 
drunkard.  He  was  neither,  although  he  did  perform 
some  remarkable  feats  both  of  eating  and  drinking  in 
his  day.  His  hfe  of  constant  out-of-door  exercise  gave 
him  a  keen  appetite,  and  a  perfect  digestion,  and  he 
loved  the  hilarity  of  the  table  as  well  as  any  man  of  his 
day.  But  in  his  later  life  he  became  a  teetotaller.  Even 
in  his  earlier  days  it  was  often  the  excitement  of  com- 
pany which  quickened  all  of  his  powers  to  their  utmost 
tension,  when  the  effect  was  attributed  to  wine.  So  fond 
was  he  of  all  sorts  and  kinds  of  out-of-the-way  company, 
that  he  was  at  one  time  in  the  habit  of  going  at  midnight 
to  the  Angel  Inn,  where  many  of  the  up  and  do\vn  Lon- 
don coaches  met,  and  there  to  preside  at  the  passengers' 
supper,  carving  for  them,  inquiring  all  about  their  respec- 
tive journeys,  and  astonishing  them  with  his  wit  and 
pleasantry.  He  would  also  linger  about  with  coachmen 
and  guards,  and  was  present  at,  and  took  a  hand  in,  many 
a  street  row,  unknown  by  those  with  whom  he  mingled. 


CHRISTOPHER  NORTH.  89 

He  is  said  to  have  remained  for  three  months  in  the 
back  room  of  a  Highland  blacksmith,  strolling  daily  about 
the  hills,  and  performing  some  of  his  prodigious  pedestrian 
feats,  to  the  great  surprise  of  the  rustics.  He  is  also  said 
to  have  followed  the  lady  who  became  his  wife  all  over  the 
lake  country  of  Scotland  in  the  disguise  of  a  waiter,  serv- 
ing her  at  table  wherever  the  party  happened  to  be,  until 
the  suspicions  of  her  father  were  aroused  by  seeing  the 
same  waiter  at  every  inn.  Wilson  then  made  himself 
known,  declared  his  admiration  for  the  lady,  and  finally 
became  her  accepted  suitor.  After  their  marriage  he 
took  her  with  him  all  over  the  Highlands  on  foot,  assur- 
ing her  that  only  so  could  she  become  really  acquainted 
with  their  beauties.  No  man  perhaps  ever  loved  the 
Highlands  as  Christopher  North  loved  them,  —  with  the 
possible  exception  of  Walter  Scott,  —  and  we  can  truly 
envy  his  young  bride  to  be  thus  escorted  through  their 
deepest  labyrinths,  and  introduced  to  their  most  delicate 
and  hidden  beauties.  Here  he  introduced  his  beloved 
also  to  the  cottages  of  the  peasants,  and  made  her  ac- 
quainted with  the  poetry  of  that  life  which  has  inspired 
some  of  the  finest  of  modern  literature.  He  knew  as 
well  as  Hogg,  or  Scott,  or  Lockhart,  that  the  characteris- 
tic romance  of  a  people  like  the  Scotch  is  to  be  sought 
chiefly  in  the  cottages  of  the  poor,  and  that  the  finest 
poetry  of  such  a  people  has  for  the  most  part  a  like  in- 
spiration. And  these  same  peasants  showed  to  their  best 
advantage  always  when  Christopher  was  around.  They 
loved  him  instinctively,  although  they  knew  him  only  as  a 
sportsman,  or  in  some  cases,  perhaps,  as  a  naturalist.  But 
his  large  heart  always  shone  forth  in  his  intercourse  with 
the  poor,  and  he  seemed  conscious  of  no  superiority  to 
them,  meeting  them  always  on  the  common  ground  of 
humanity,  and  sympathizing,  in  his  hearty  and  genial  way, 
in  all  their  joys  and  sorrows.  They  took  to  him  just  as 
dogs  and  children  did. 

And  his  descriptions  of  their  cramped  and  narrow  lives, 
enlivened  by  his  characteristic  humor,  are  among  the  best 


go  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

pictures  the  world  has  cherished  of  Scottish  rural  life. 
He  did  not  spare  their  vices,  but  gave  many  dramatic 
pictures  of  the  darker  sides  of  peasant  life,  with  which  he 
gained  a  close  acquaintance  during  those  long  foot-jour- 
neys which  he  was  so  fond  of  making,  living  really  what 
we  would  call  the  Hfe  of  a  tramp,  for  long  periods.  Some- 
times he  camped  ^\^th  gypsies  for  weeks,  and  at  all  times 
was  intimate  with  all  of  the  so-called  lower  classes. 
Tinkers,  cairds,  poachers,  were  his  familiar  roadside  ac- 
quaintances, and  he  extracted  great  amusement  from  their 
peculiarities.  Sometimes  he  had  to  win  the  respect  of 
these  worthies  by  knocking  them  down  in  the  beginning 
of  the  acquaintance,  but  after  that  they  usually  stood  by 
him  to  the  end.  He  usually  figured  as  the  champion  of 
the  weak  in  these  games  at  fisticuffs,  but  sometimes  he 
managed  things  on  his  own  account. 

Although  he  loved  to  wander  in  the  Highlands,  he 
made  his  home  among  the  lakes  at  Elleray.  This  home 
was  a  rambling,  mossy-roofed  cottage,  of  very  picturesque 
appearance,  overhung  by  a  giant  sycamore. 

"  Never,"  he  says,  "  in  this  well-wooded  world,  not  even  in 
the  days  of  the  Druids,  could  there  have  been  such  another 
tree.  It  would  be  easier  to  suppose  two  Shakspeares.  Oh, 
sweetest  and  shadiest  of  sycamores,  we  love  thee  beyond  all 
other  trees." 

And  he  thus  discourses  of  the  lakes  amid  which  he 
lived,  —  and  about  whose  borders  he  wandered  so 
continually :  — 

"Each  lake  hath  its  promontories,  that  every  step  you 
walk,  every  stroke  you  row,  undergo  miraculous  metamor- 
phoses, accordant  to  the  change  that  comes  o'er  the  spirit  of 
your  dream,  as  your  imagination  glances  again  over  the 
transfigured  mountains.  Each  lake  hath  its  bays  of  bliss, 
where  might  ride  at  her  moorings,  made  of  the  stalks  of 
water-lilies,  the  fairy  bark  of  a  spiritual  life.  Each  lake 
hath  its  hanging  terraces  of  immortal  green,  that  along  her 
shores   run  glimmering  far    down    beneath   the   superficial 


CHRISTOPHER  NORTH  pi 

sunshine,  where  the  poet  in  his  becalmed  canoe,  among  the 
lustre,  could  fondly  swear  by  all  that  is  most  beautiful  on 
earth,  and  air,  and  water,  that  these  three  are  one,  blended 
as  they  are  by  the  interfusing  spirit  of  heavenly  peace." 

Lover  of  beauty  as  he  was,  yet  he  was  well  content  with 
what  he  could  find  in  Scotland ;  he  cared  little  for  Eng- 
land, and  nothing  for  the  Continent.  There  was  enough 
to  exhaust  the  seeing  possibilities  of  a  lifetime  in  his  own 
little  land,  with  its  rocks  and  lakes  and  heathery  hills. 
This  was  because  he  really  had  the  poet's  eye  and  heart. 
Such  do  not  need  to  traverse  the  whole  wide  world  to 
find  enough  of  beauty ;  it  is  only  the  mediocre  and  the 
commonplace  who  care  to  gaze  superficially  at  the  land- 
scapes of  two  continents.  But  Wilson  knew  his  land  not 
only  with  the  eye  of  a  poet,  but  also  with  that  of  a  natu- 
rahst.  His  favorite  pastime  was  ornithology,  and  he  made 
fine  collections  of  specimens  in  this  line. 

He  was  a  great  sportsman,  and  a  story  is  told  by  his 
daughter,  Mrs.  Gordon,  of  his  travelling  seventy  miles  in 
one  day,  to  fish  in  a  certain  favorite  loch  among  the 
braes  of  Glenarchy,  called  Loch  Toila.  He  was  also  a 
good  shot,  and  very  enthusiastic  in  sport  even  to  old  age. 
Boating  was  another  favorite  pastime  :  and  engaged  in  one 
or  another  of  these  out-of-door  pursuits,  he  passed  a  very 
large  portion  of  his  whole  life.  When  he  did  Avrite,  he 
did  it  with  great  rapidity,  composing  one  of  the  "  Noctes  " 
at  a  sitting.  His  love  for  the  animal  creation  was  very 
deep,  and  he  would  never  submit  to  seeing  any  creature 
abused.  He  one  day  saw  a  man  cruelly  beating  his 
horse,  which  was  overloaded  with  coals,  and  could  not 
move.  He  remonstrated  with  the  driver,  who,  exasper- 
ated at  the  interference,  took  up  the  whip  in  a  threatening 
way,  as  if  with  intent  to  strike  the  professor.  In  one  in- 
stant the  well-nerved  hand  of  Wilson,  not  new  to  these 
encounters,  twisted  the  whip  from  the  coarse  fist  of  the 
driver,  and  walking  up  to  the  cart,  he  unfastened  the 
trams  and  hurled  the  whole  weight  of  the  coals  into 
the  street.     He  then  took  the  horse  and  led  it  away,  de- 


92  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

positing  it  in  the  hands  of  the  authorities,  with  injunctions 
to  see  that  the  beast  was  better  treated  in  future. 

He  made  great  pets  of  game-birds,  the  aristocracy  of 
the  species,  with  their  dehcate  heads  and  exquisite  plum- 
age, and  kept  at  one  time  no  less  than  sixty-two  in  the 
back  yard  of  his  house.  The  noise  was  simply  unendur- 
able to  all  but  Wilson,  who  was  never  annoyed  by  it  in 
the  least.  He  kept  one  lame  sparrow  for  eleven  years, 
caring  for  it  with  the  tenderest  solicitude. 

He  was  always  well  known  in  the  houses  of  the  poor, 
and  he  never  gave  up  one  of  his  humble  friends.  He 
was  tender  and  gentle  always  to  these,  as  to  the  members 
of  his  own  household,  where  it  was  said  the  very  strength 
of  his  hand  was  softened,  that  he  might  caress  the  infant, 
or  play  with  the  little  ones  at  his  feet.  With  all  children 
he  was  a  prime  favorite,  and  in  his  declining  years  his 
grandchildren  were  his  daily  playmates.  Noah's  ark, 
trumpets,  drums,  pencils,  puzzles,  dolls,  were  all  supposed 
by  them  to  possess  interest  in  his  eyes  equal  to  their 
own. 

He  was  thrown  much  upon  these  children  for  his  pleas- 
ures near  the  close  of  his  life.  That  frame  of  gigantic 
build  and  of  gigantic  strength  became  almost  helpless 
from  paralysis,  and  he  was  cared  for  till  death  by  his 
daughter,  the  mother  of  these  favored  little  ones.  Oh,  it 
is  sad  to  think  of  it !  Poor  Christopher,  —  the  active,  the 
alert,  the  keen-sighted,  the  fleet-footed,  the  gay  and  rol- 
licking sportsman,  the  famous  angler,  the  champion  boxer, 
too,  upon  occasions,  —  laid  low,  and  propped  helpless  upon 
pillows  within  walls,  which  he  had  always  hated  so  sin- 
cerely.    He  writes  :  — 

'*  Our  spirit  burns  within  us,  but  our  limbs  are  palsied, 
and  our  feet  must  brush  the  heather  no  more.  Lo,  how  beau- 
tifully those  fast-travelling  pointers  do  their  work  on  that 
black  mountain's  breast;  intersecting  it  into  parallelograms 
and  squares  and  circles,  and  now  all  a-stoop  on  a  sudden,  as 
if  frozen  to  death.  Higher  up  among  the  rocks  and  cliffs 
and  stones,  we  see  a  stripling  whose  ambition  it  is  to  strike 


CHRISTOPHER  NORTH.  93 

the  sky  with  his  forehead,  and  wet  his  hair  in  the  misty 
cloud,  pursuing  the  ptarmigan.  .  .  .  Never  shall  eld  deaden 
our  sympathies  with  the  pastimes  of  our  fellow-men,  any 
more  than  with  their  highest  raptures,  their  profoundest 
griefs." 

It  is  safe  to  say  that  he  kept  his  word,  and  was  to  the 
last,  the  same  genial,  warm-hearted,  impulsive,  wayward 
man  who  had  by  these  and  other  engaging  qualities  made 
for  himself  so  large  a  place  in  the  heart  of  his  country- 
men, during  the  long  years  he  had  wandered  over  her 
moors  and  hills,  seeing  all  her  beauties,  and  describing 
them  as  no  other  had  done. 

He  was  almost  the  last  of  that  band  of  strong  men 
who  cast  such  lustre  over  the  beginning  of  this  century. 
Coleridge  had  gone  before,  and  Wordsworth,  Byron,  and 
Campbell,  Shelley,  and  Canning,  and  Peel,  and  Jeffrey,  and 
Moore,  and  he  lingered  on  in  a  sohtude  made  greater  by 
that  last  stroke  of  calamity  which  deprived  him  of  motion 
for  a  time  that  was  weary  and  heart-breaking  to  him,  and 
over  which  the  world  yet  sheds  its  sympathizing  tears.  He 
died  at  the  age  of  sixty-eight. 


LORD    BYRON. 

SO  many  volumes  have  been  written  about  the  domes- 
tic life  and  the  loves  of  Lord  Byron,  that  it  would 
be  a  hopeless  undertaking  to  attempt  to  say  anything  new 
about  them.  But  the  story  of  Byron's  life  will  never  lose 
its  fascination,  and  to  every  new  generation  of  readers 
the  romance  will  be  fresh.  Marvellously  beautiful,  won- 
derfully gifted,  unfortunately  constituted  man ;  wronged 
by  his  birth,  wronged  by  his  education,  wronged  most 
of  all  by  himself,  the  world  will  never  cease  to  wonder 
and  to  weep  when  his  tragic  story  is  told.  While  the 
language  remains  his  words  will  live.  Immortal  poetry 
for  youth  !  —  new  generations  will  learn  it  by  heart,  when 
the  older  generations  are  forgetting;  and  long  after  all 
memory  of  his  waywardness  and  folly  has  faded  from  the 
world,  his  deathless  songs  will  still  sing  on. 

In  any  attempt  to  understand  Byron,  his  ancestry  must 
be  much  considered.  It  will  never  do  to  compare  him 
with  cool-headed,  calm-blooded,  matter-of-fact  people. 
He  was  the  pecuHar  product  of  a  peculiar  race.  Com- 
ing through  generations  of  hot,  turbulent  blood,  which 
was  never  once  mastered  or  tamed  by  its  possessors,  he 
entered  the  world  with  a  temperament  and  disposition 
which  made  it  simply  impossible  that  he  should  lead  the 
ordinary  life  of  the  British  Philistine  of  his  day. 

As  far  back  as  they  have  been  traced,  the  family  were 
violent,  passionate,  high-spirited,  but  unrestrained  in  the 


LORD  BYRON. 


95 


indulgence  of  their  desires  by  any  of  the  cardinal  prin- 
ciples of  morality.  Byron's  father,  one  of  Byron's  biogra- 
phers tells  us,  had  outraged  in  his  previous  family  Hfe  not 
only  the  principles  of  religion,  but  also  the  laws  of  society ; 
and  when,  in  1783,  he  married  Catherine  Gordon,  the 
wealthy  heiress  of  Gight,  Aberdeenshire,  it  was  chiefly 
for  the  purpose  of  paying  off  his  debts  with  her  fortune. 
Within  two  years  after  the  marriage  the  heiress  of  Gight 
was  reduced  to  a  pittance  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  pounds 
a  year.  In  1790,  for  economy's  sake,  they  removed  from 
London  to  Aberdeen,  but  soon  separated. 

Even  after  this,  Captain  Byron  was  mean-spirited  enough 
to  solicit  money  from  his  wife,  and  she  had  not  the  heart 
to  refuse  him.  With  a  small  supply  thus  obtained  he 
crossed  the  channel,  and  in  1 79 1  died  in  Valenciennes, 
in  the  North  of  France.  Of  the  violent  temper  of  Byron's 
mother  many  stories  are  told,  and  of  her  heartless  treat- 
ment of  him  in  his  early  years ;  so  that  upon  neither  side 
can  we  find  much  upon  which  we  could  expect  to  build  a 
very  noble  or  well-balanced  character,  and  the  fact  seems 
to  be  that  the  eccentricities  of  the  Byron  family  were  so 
great  as  to  be  dangerously  near  the  point  called  insanity. 

A  youth  inheriting  such  blood  as  this,  and  brought  up 
without  even  a  pretence  of  moral  or  religious  training, 
could  hardly  be  expected  to  develop  many  of  the  domes- 
tic virtues.  Neither  could  high-mindedness  or  lofty  prin- 
ciple be  predicted  of  him.  And  in  truth,  Byron  possessed 
neither  of  these  things.  With  this  fiery  Norman  blood 
flowing  in  his  veins,  restlessness  was  the  habitual  condi- 
tion of  his  existence,  such  restlessness  as  drove  him  to 
seek  excitement  at  whatever  cost,  —  quiet,  as  he  expressed 
it,  to  the  quick  bosom  being  hell.  This  restlessness  led 
him  into  all  sorts  of  folly  and  excess,  in  the  pursuit  of 
new  excitements.  Then  he  was  cursed  with  an  exag- 
gerated sensibility,  which,  while  it  gave  him  many  rare 
delights  in  life,  inflicted  upon  him  also  the  keenest 
tortures.  His  massive  egotism  was  the  cause,  doubdess, 
of  many  of  his  most  marked  eccentricities.     He  was  so 


ge  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREA  T  A  UTHORS. 

anxious  to  have  the  world's  gaze  fixed  upon  him  that 
he  said  and  did  things  continually  for  the  mere  purpose 
of  holding  its  attention.  In  this  way  he  frequently  made 
himself  appear  worse  than  he  really  was.  Society  was 
held  willingly  in  the  thrall  of  his  personality.  A  dull 
world  likes  to  have  laid  bare  for  its  inspection  the  pulses 
of  a  vivid  existence.  Byron  may  have  been  no  worse 
than  many  other  men  of  his  day,  for  it  was  a  time  of 
general  immorality,  but  he  never  concealed  even  his 
worst  vices.  While  hypocrisy  is  a  national  vice  in 
England,  Byron,  though  essentially  English  in  most 
things,  never  possessed  this  marked  characteristic  of  his 
countrymen.  He  flaunted  his  vices  in  the  light  of  day ; 
and  the  world  took  a  speedy  revenge  upon  him  for  his 
audacity.  The  little  episode  of  his  love  for  Mary 
Chaworth  occurred  at  so  early  an  age  that  it  seems 
scarcely  probable  that  it  affected  him  as  seriously  as  he 
claimed ;  yet  he  was  a  very  precocious  child,  and  his 
account  of  the  strength  of  his  passion,  and  its  disap- 
pointment, may  not  be  wholly  an  affectation.  It  is  diffi- 
cult, too,  to  arrive  at  his  real  feeling  toward  Miss 
Milbank,  there  was  so  much  of  contradiction  both  in 
his  words  and  in  his  conduct.  Miss  Milbank  probably 
loved  him  but  feared  to  marry  him,  having  heard  of  the 
irregularities  of  his  life.  And  certainly  the  sort  of  life 
which  Byron  had  led  was  a  very  poor  preparation  for  hap- 
piness at  the  fireside,  and  if  all  other  causes  of  unhappi- 
ness  had  been  wanting  would  doubtless  have  wrecked 
his  union  with  Miss  Milbank.  But  there  were  not  want- 
ing numberless  other  sources  of  misery  to  this  ill-mated 
couple,  first  among  which  was  the  complete  incompati- 
bility of  their  tastes,  feelings,  characters.  That  she  was  a 
noble,  intelhgent,  and  high-principled  woman,  none  have 
ever  denied.  The  wonder  was,  not  that  she  would  not 
live  with  such  a  man  as  Byron,  but  that  she  could  ever 
have  married  him.  In  charity  we  must  decide  that  she 
was  ignorant  of  the  unspeakable  degradation  of  such  an 
act.     That  he  was  a  famous  man  of  genius,  the  most 


LORD   BYRON.  97 

wonderfully  gifted  poet  of  his  time,  might  have  been  a 
temptation,  but  it  was  no  excuse,  if  she  entered  into  the 
contract  with  her  eyes  open.  But  aside  from  the  question  of 
vice  or  virtue,  there  was  nothing  in  common  between  them. 
She  felt  that  she  had  fallen  from  the  unalterable  serenity  and 
dignity  of  her  existence,  into  chaos.  Her  natural  reserve 
and  his  natural  frankness  were  the  occasion  of  continual 
clashings.  Her  formality  and  his  bluntness  caused  con- 
stant unrest.  Accustomed  to  the  regularity  of  a  well- 
ordered  English  household,  she  was  miserable  at  the  utter 
demoralization  of  their  home,  —  of  which  the  bailiff  had 
possession  nine  times  during  the  short  year  they  occu- 
pied it.  Formed  for  a  calm,  domestic  life,  she  would 
probably  have  been  a  most  admirable  wife  to  a  man 
suited  to  her  virtuous  tastes,  but  her  very  virtues  irritated 
Byron. 

Lady  Caroline  Lamb,  who  had  loved  him  so  madly, 
and  on  whom  he  had  expended  a  temporary  passion, 
was  in  her  ardent  nature  and  erratic  genius  much  better 
suited  to  his  tastes ;  and  yet  it  had  not  taken  him  long 
to  tire  of  her,  beautiful  as  she  had  been.  And  were 
ever  such  bitter  and  cruel  words  addressed  to  a  ^\Tonged 
woman,  even  though  she  had  herself  been  fearfully  to 
blame  in  the  matter,  as  those  sent  by  Byron  to  this 
poor  creature,  who  had  sent  him  a  last  touching  appeal 
to  remember  her  ?     He  wrote  :  — 

"  Remember  you  !  remember  you  !  Until  the  waters  of 
Lethe  have  flowed  over  the  burning  torrent  of  your  existence, 
shame  and  remorse  will  cry  in  your  ears,  and  pursue  you 
with  the  delirium  of  fever.  Remember  you  !  Do  not 
doubt  it,  I  will  remember.  And  your  husband  will  also 
remember  you.  Neither  of  us  can  ever  forget  you.  To  him 
you  have  been  an  unfaithful  wife,  and  to  me  —  a  devil !  " 

Terrible  words,  which  apparently  changed  her  love  to 
hate,  for  she  was  his  relentless  enemy  for  many  years. 
But  one  day  the  great  poet  died,  in  Greece,  the  death  of 
a  hero.     His  body  was  taken  back  to  England  for  burial, 

7 


g8  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

and  Caroline  Lamb  stood  at  her  window  and  saw  the 
procession  go  by.  The  coffin  was  followed  by  a  dog, 
howling  piteously.  Caroline  uttered  a  heartrending  cry, 
and  sunk  to  the  floor  insensible.  They  raised  her  and 
placed  her  in  her  bed,  from  which  she  never  rose ;  she 
was  borne  from  it  to  her  grave. 

Such  was  the  devotion  which  his  fatal  beauty  and  fas- 
cination won  from  women,  from  many  women,  in  his 
brief  life.  It  is  not  probable  that  his  wife  ever  loved  him 
in  this  way,  but  had  she  done  so  it  seems  very  unlikely 
that  they  could  have  lived  a  happy  hfe  together. 

For  one  reason,  he  had  no  faith  in  women.  "  False  as 
a  woman  or  an  epitaph  "  expressed  his  deliberate  opinion 
of  the  sex ;  and  it  must  be  confessed  that  the  sort  of  women 
with  whom  he  had  best  acquaintance  were  not  calculated 
to  give  him  high  ideas  upon  the  subject.  This  low  esti- 
mate of  women  would  have  stood  in  the  way  of  domestic 
happiness  under  any  circumstances. 

He  was  not  ignorant  of  this,  and  in  "  Childe  Harold  " 
states  the  case  thus  :  — 

"  For  he  through  sin's  long  labyrinth  had  run, 

Nor  made  atonement  when  he  did  amiss  ; 

Had  sighed  to  many,  though  he  loved  but  one, 

And  that  loved  one,  alas  !  could  ne'er  be  his. 

Ah,  happy  she  !  to  'scape  from  him  whose  kiss 

Had  been  pollution  unto  aught  so  chaste ! 

Who  soon  had  left  her  charms  for  vulgar  bliss, 

And  spoiled  her  goodly  lands  to  gild  his  waste, 
Nor  calm  domestic  bliss  had  ever  deigned  to  taste." 

It  has  been  thought  by  some  that  had  Byron  had  the 
good  fortune  to  meet  his  latest  love,  the  Countess  Guic- 
cioli,  in  his  youth,  all  his  stormy  life  might  have  been 
changed  and  redeemed.  However  this  may  be,  she  seems, 
so  far  as  we  can  judge  of  her,  to  have  been  more  likely 
to  be  a  poet's  one  great  love  than  any  of  the  others 
who  for  a  time  held  his  wandering  fancy.  Beautiful  as  a 
poet's  wildest  dream,  young,  ardent,  gifted,  and  passion- 
ately devoted  to  him,  what  more  could  even  his  exacting 
nature  demand?  — 


LORD   BYRON. 


99 


"  Educated  in  the  gloom  of  the  convent,  the  notes  of  the 
organ,  the  clouds  of  incense,  the  waxen  tapers  burning  at 
the  feet  of  the  Virgin,  the  litanies  of  the  nuns,  — all  this  had 
filled  her  mind  with  the  poetry  of  the  cloister,  and  with  that 
mystic  and  indefinable  love  which  at  the  first  contact  with 
the  world  was  ready  to  change  into  a  violent  passion  when 
it  should  meet  with  an  object  upon  which  to  fix  itself." 

Married  as  soon  as  she  left  the  convent  to  a  man  se- 
lected by  her  parents,  whom  she  had  barely  seen,  and 
who  was  old  enough  to  be  her  father,  she  was  at  the  time 
Byron  first  saw  her  a  melancholy  and  unhappy  woman, 
much  given  to  the  reading  of  poetry  and  of  the  immoral 
novels  of  that  time  and  place. 

That  she  should  love  Byron  at  first  sight  was  inevitable, 
and  that  which  followed  was  almost  as  inevitable.  She 
herself  thus  describes  her  first  acquaintance  with  him  :  — 

''His  noble  and  exquisitely  beautiful  countenance,  the 
tone  of  his  voice,  his  manners,  the  thousand  enchantments 
that  surrounded  him,  rendered  him  so  different  and  so  su- 
perior a  being  to  any  by  whom  I  was  surrounded  or  had 
hitherto  seen  that  it  was  impossible  he  should  not  have  left 
the  most  profound  impression  upon  me.  From  that  evening, 
during  the  whole  of  my  subsequent  stay  at  Venice,  we  met 
every  day." 

Almost  the  only  ghmpses  of  quiet  happiness  which 
Byron  ever  enjoyed  came  firom  this  association.  The 
lovers  seemed  to  be  admirably  adapted  to  each  other, 
and  their  love  knew  no  diminution  during  the  short  re- 
mainder of  his  life.  And  she  cherished  his  memory  with 
the  utmost  fondness  throughout  a  long  life,  writing  of  him 
with  unbounded  enthusiasm,  in  her  own  account  of  her  ac- 
quaintance with  him,  many  years  after  his  death.  Byron 
has  probably  exaggerated  his  own  unhappiness,  yet  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  much  of  what  he  describes  was  very 
real.  The  nobler  elements  of  his  character  were  con- 
stantly at  war  with  the  lower,  and  although  he  did  not 
have  sufficient  strength  of  character  to  lead  the  noble  life 


lOO  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

of  which  he  had  frequent  visions,  he  had  enough  innate  no- 
bility to  despise  himself  for  the  life  he  did  lead.  Doubt- 
less there  was  much  of  truth  in  what  he  wTOte  in  his 
journal  in  Switzerland  :  — 

"  But  in  all,  the  recollections  of  bitterness,  and  more  espe- 
cially of  recent  and  more  home  desolation,  which  must  ac- 
company one  through  life,  have  preyed  upon  me  here  ;  and 
neither  the  music  of  the  shepherd,  the  crashing  of  the  ava- 
lanche, or  the  torrent,  the  mountain,  the  glacier,  the  forest, 
or  the  cloud,  have  for  one  moment  lightened  the  weight 
upon  my  heart,  or  enabled  me  to  lose  my  own  wretched 
identity  in  the  majesty,  and  the  power,  and  the  glory  around, 
above,  and  beneath  me." 

The  close  of  Byron's  Hfe,  in  Greece,  seems  to  have 
been  one  of  peculiar  desolation.  There  is  something 
really  tragic  in  the  utter  loneliness  of  such  a  death-bed. 
Years  before,  he  had  written  concerning  his  death  :  — 


"  When  time  or  soon  or  late  shall  bring 

The  dreamless  sleep  that  lulls  the  dead, 
Oblivion  !  may  thy  languid  wing 
Wave  gently  o'er  my  dying  bed. 

"  No  band  of  friends  or  heirs  be  there 
To  w^eep,  or  wish  the  coming  blow ; 
No  maiden  with  dishevelled  hair 
To  feel,  or  feign,  decorous  woe. 

"  But  silent  let  me  sink  to  earth, 

With  no  officious  mourners  near  ; 
I  would  not  mar  one  hour  of  rest 
Or  startle  friendship  with  a  tear." 

Never  was  wish  more  literally  fulfilled  than  this.    There 
were  none  but  servants  about  him  in  his  last  hours  :  — 


"  In  all  these  attendants,"  says  Parry,  "  there  was  an 
over-officiousness  of  zeal ;  but  as  they  could  not  understand 
each  other's  language  their  zeal  only  added  to  the  confusion. 
This  circumstance,  and  the  want  of  common  necessaries, 


LORD  BYRON.  Id 

made  Byron's  apartment  such  a  picture  o£  distress  and  even 
anguish  during  the  last  two  or  three  days  of  his  life  as  I 
never  before  beheld,  and  have  no  wish  to  witness  again." 

Hi^  remains  were  taken  to  England  and  interred  in  the 
family  vault  in  the  Church  of  Hucknall.  His  poems  are 
his  imperishable  monument. 


;4«0>M^ 


SHELLEY. 

THE  beautiful  face  of  Shelley  is  one  that  is  familiar 
to  all  students  of  literary  biography,  and  contends 
with  that  of  Byron  for  the  distinction  of  being  the  hand- 
somest among  the  men  of  letters  of  his  day.  Burns 
was  also  a  picture  of  manly  beauty,  whose  features  have 
long  been  familiar  in  engravings ;  but  Byron  and  Shelley 
look  the  ideal  poet  far  more  than  their  sturdier  Scottish 
brother.  The  face  of  Schiller  was  also  one  of  great  charm, 
and  Tennyson  and  Longfellow  in  their  youth  were  also 
beautiful ;  but  the  world  is  more  familiar  with  the  repre- 
sentations of  their  later  years,  and  has  almost  forgotten 
the  alluring  eyes  and  the  flowing  locks  of  the  youthful 
bards. 

Shelley  always  had  a  girlish  look,  caused  perhaps  by  a 
feeble  constitution,  and  he  suffered  much  from  poor  health, 
which  added  to  the  delicacy  of  his  face.  But  there  was 
a  wonderful  charm  about  his  countenance  even  in  child- 
hood, and  his  eyes  seemed  like  wells  into  which  one 
might  fall.  There  was  rare  sweetness  in  his  smile,  too. 
He  was  a  tall  man  and  very  slender,  with  a  certain  square- 
ness of  shoulder,  and  great  bodily  litheness  and  activity. 
He  had  an  oval  face  and  delicate  features.  His  forehead 
was  high.  His  fine  dark-brown  hair  disposed  itself  in 
beautiful  curls  over  his  brow  and  around  the  back  of  his 
neck.  The  eyes  were  brown,  and  the  coloring  of  his  face 
as  soft  as  that  of  a  girl's,  in  youth,  though  he  bronzed 
somewhat  during  his  life  in  Italy. 


SHELIEY.  103 

His  countenance  changed  with  every  passing  emotion ; 
his  usual  look  was  earnest,  but  when  joyful  he  was  very 
bright  and  animated  in  expression.  When  sad  there  was 
something  peculiarly  touching  in  his  face,  and  there  was 
sometimes  expressed  in  his  look  a  mournful  weariness 
of  everything.  But  there  was  something  noble  and  com- 
manding in  his  aspect  through  all  changes,  something 
hinting  of  his  high  and  noble  birth,  as  well  as  of  his 
genius.  He  had  a  peculiar  voice,  not  powerful,  but  musi- 
cal and  expressive,  and  fine  agreeable  manners  when  once 
the  shyness  of  youth  had  worn  off. 

That  youth  was  a  period  of  great  unhappiness  in  many 
ways.  He  was  irritable  and  sensitive,  and  much  given 
to  reading  and  brooding,  at  which  the  other  children  —  or, 
as  he  called  them  "the  httle  fiends  —  scoffed  incessantly." 
He  had  thoughts  beyond  his  years,  and  found  in  these 
his  greatest  happiness.  He  was  impatient  and  fiill  of 
impulse,  with  a  strong  dash  of  egotism,  Hke  most  men  of 
genius. 

That  he  was  eccentric  beyond  the  usual  eccentricities 
of  genius  is  known  to  all  the  world.  That  he  set  out  fully 
determined  to  live  the  ideal  life  and  to  reform  the  world, 
is  as  well  known ;  also,  that  he  failed  in  both  these  at- 
tempts, —  partly  through  the  limitations  of  his  own  nature, 
and  partly  that  the  contract  was  too  large,  even  for  a  man 
of  his  undoubted  genius. 

Shelley  was  born  in  the  County  of  Sussex,  on  the  4th  of 
August,  1792.  His  most  characteristic  childish  amuse- 
ment seems  to  have  been  the  making  of  chemical  experi- 
ments ;  and  his  brothers  and  sisters  were  often  terrified  at 
the  experiments  in  electricity  which  he  tried  upon  them. 
He  was  also  fond  of  making  the  children  personate  spirits 
or  fiends,  while  he  burned  some  inflammable  liquid. 

He  was  full  of  cheerful  fun,  and  had  all  the  comic  vein 
so  agreeable  in  a  household.  His  benevolent  impulses 
displayed  themselves  in  his  earliest  childhood  in  his  wish 
to  educate  some  child ;  and  he  talked  seriously  of  pur- 
chasing a  little  girl  for  that  purpose,  and  actually  entered 


104  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

into  negotiations  to  that  effect  with  a  tumbler  who  came 
to  the  back  door.  His  hatred  of  tyranny  also  showed 
itself  at  the  earliest  age,  in  rebellion  against  the  rule  of 
the  old  schoolmistress  who  educated  his  sisters. 

He  was  exceedingly  precocious,  and  was  thus  sent  to 
Eton  at  an  age  much  younger  than  other  boys.  He  was 
perhaps  a  little  proud  of  his  birth  and  breeding ;  but  it 
was  probably  more  from  his  inborn  hatred  of  tyranny 
than  from  the  former  reason,  that  he  utterly  refused  to 
"  fag  "  for  the  older  boys,  and  in  this  way  got  himself  at 
once  into  trouble  in  the  school.  Neither  the  cruel  vitu- 
peration of  his  fellows  nor  menaces  of  punishment  upon 
the  part  of  his  superiors  could  bend  his  will  to  an  obedi- 
ence which  could  only  be  yielded  at  the  expense  of 
self-respect.  He  was  soon  withdrawn  from  Eton,  and 
was  afterwards  sent  to  Oxford.  Here  his  first  great  en- 
thusiasm was  for  chemistry ;  and  the  appearance  of  his 
room  is  thus  described  by  a  fellow-student :  — 

"  Books,  boots,  papers,  shoes,  philosophical  instruments, 
clothes,  pistols,  linen,  crockery,  ammunition,  and  phials 
innumerable,  with  money,  stockings,  paints,  crucibles,  bags, 
and  boxes,  were  scattered  on  the  floor  and  in  every  place  ; 
as  if  the  young  chemist,  in  order  to  analyze  the  mystery  of 
creation,  had  endeavored  first  to  reconstruct  the  primeval 
chaos.  The  tables,  and  especially  the  carpet,  were  already 
stained  with  large  spots  of  various  hues,  which  frequently 
proclaimed  the  agency  of  fire.  An  electrical  machine,  an 
air-pump,  the  galvanic  trough,  a  solar  microscope,  and  large 
glass  jars  were  conspicuous  amidst  the  mass  of  matter. 
More  than  one  hole  in  the  carpet  could  elucidate  the  ulti- 
mate phenomena  of  combustion, — especially  a  formidable 
aperture  in  the  middle  of  the  room,  where  the  floor  had  also 
been  burned  by  spontaneous  combustion  ;  and  the  horrible 
wound  was  speedily  enlarged  by  rents,  — for  the  philoso- 
pher as  he  hastily  crossed  the  room  in  pursuit  of  truth,  was 
frequently  caught  in  it  by  the  foot." 

No  student  ever  read  more  assiduously  than  he ;  and 
one  of  his  chums  said  to  him,  after  he  had  literally  read 
all  day:  — 


SHELLEY.  105 

"  If  I  read  as  long  as  you  read,  Shelley,  my  hair  and  my 
teeth  would  be  strewed  about  on  the  floor,  and  my  eyes 
would  slip  down  into  my  waistcoat  pockets." 

It  was  only  by  attracting  his  attention  by  some  extrava- 
gance that  he  could  be  drawn  away  from  his  books.  He 
seldom  stopped  to  take  a  regular  meal,  but  would  have 
his  pockets  stuffed  with  bread,  from  which  he  ate  from 
time  to  time,  anywhere  he  chanced  to  be.  When  he  was 
walking  in  London  he  would  suddenly  run  into  a  baker's 
shop,  purchase  a  supply,  and  breaking  a  loaf,  offer  half 
of  it  to  his  companion ;  if  it  was  refused  he  would  won- 
der that  his  friend  did  not  like  bread,  and  could  scarcely 
appreciate  the  joke  when  they  laughed  at  him  for  de- 
vouring two  or  three  pounds  of  dry  bread  in  the  streets. 
Very  early  in  life  he  began  to  have  decided  opinions 
upon  religious  topics ;  and  for  some  of  his  so-called  athe- 
istic tendencies,  embodied  in  his  writings,  he  was  expelled 
from  Oxford  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  without  a  word  of 
friendly  remonstrance  upon  the  part  of  the  authorities,  or 
any  attempt  whatever  to  counteract  the  errors  which  he 
had  imbibed  from  the  reading  of  French  philosophy.  We 
can  scarcely  believe  it  at  this  day,  but  it  was  true. 

"At  seventeen,"  says  Mrs.  Shelley,  "fragile  in  health 
and  frame,  of  the  purest  habits  in  morals,  full  of  devoted 
generosity  and  universal  kindness,  glowing  with  ardor  to 
attain  wisdom,  resolved  at  every  personal  sacrifice  to  do 
right,  burning  with  a  desire  for  affection  and  sympathy,  he 
was  treated  as  a  reprobate,  cast  forth  as  a  criminal." 

Even  his  father  cast  him  off  on  account  of  his  impious 
opinions,  and  added  his  curse ;  and  had  he  been  in  the 
way  of  procuring  a  lettre  de  cachet,  like  Mirabeau's  father, 
he  would  certainly  have  sent  him  to  Newgate  and  kept  him 
there.  i\s  it  was,  all  his  friends  deserted  him,  and  he  lived 
in  lodgings  in  London,  in  a  very  irregular  manner,  for  some 
time.  Even  his  cousin  Harriet  Grove,  with  whom  he  had 
been  in  love  in  his  boyish  way  for  a  long  time,  gave  him 
up,  and  soon  after  married  another.     The  affair  was  not 


I06  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

a  serious  one  upon  the  part  of  either ;  but  it  cost  Shelley 
some  tears  at  the  time.  He  soon  consoled  himself,  how- 
ever, with  a  schoolmate  of  his  sisters  whom  he  sometimes 
met  when  he  went  to  visit  them.  Harriet  Westbrook 
was  empowered  by  his  sisters  to  convey  to  Percy  such 
sums  of  money  as  they  could  gather  for  him  ;  for  his 
father  had  refused  to  assist  him,  and  he  was  in  absolute 
want  at  this  time.  She  appeared  to  Shelley  in  the  guise 
of  a  ministering  angel,  and  his  imagination  at  once  took 
fire.  She  was  a  comely,  pleasing,  amiable,  ordinary  girl, 
who  felt  herself  oppressed  because  obliged  to  go  to  school, 
and  excited  Shelley's  sympathy  by  appearing  unhappy. 
He  soon  became  entangled  with  her  and  her  sister,  who 
was  older,  and  who  is  accused  of  furthering  the  intrigue 
out  of  ambition,  thinking  that  the  son  of  a  baronet  must  be 
a  great  match.     He  writes  to  a  friend  in  May,  1811  :  — 

"  You  will  perhaps  see  me  before  you  can  answer  this  -, 
perhaps  not ;  Heaven  knows.  I  shall  certainly  come  to 
York,  but  Harriet  Westbrook  will  decide  whether  now  or 
in  three  weeks.  Her  father  has  persecuted  her  in  a  most 
horrible  way  by  endeavoring  to  compel  her  to  go  to  school. 
She  asked  my  advice  ;  resistance  was  the  answer,  —  at  the 
same  time  that  I  essayed  to  mollify  Mr.  W.  in  vain.  And 
in  consequence  of  my  advice,  she  has  thrown  herself  upon 
my  protection." 

The  whole  history  of  Shelley's  courtship  of  Harriet  —  or 
of  her  courtship  of  him,  as  many  of  his  friends  put  it  — 
will  probably  never  be  written.  It  seems  to  have  been 
promoted  by  others  quite  as  much  as  by  themselves. 
That  her  father  was  not  averse  to  her  marriage  with  the 
eldest  son  of  a  baronet  may  be  taken  for  granted,  and 
Shelley  was  the  very  man  to  be  duped  by  designing  par- 
ties ;  of  this  there  can  be  no  doubt.  He  was  but  nine- 
teen years  old,  and  she  but  sixteen,  when  they  eloped,  — 
of  which  proceeding  there  does  not  seem  to  have  been 
any  especial  need,  —  and  proceeded  to  Edinburgh,  where 
they  were  married.  By  the  time  they  reached  Edinburgh 
their  money  was  gone,  and  Shelley  laid  the  case  before 


SHELLEY.  107 

his  landlord,  and  asked  him  to  advance  money  enough 
so  that  they  might  be  married.  To  this  the  landlord 
consented,  and  the  ceremony  was  performed.  But  the 
landlord,  it  appears,  presumed  somewhat  upon  the  aid  he 
had  rendered,  and  in  the  evening,  when  Shelley  and  his 
bride  were  alone  together,  he  knocked  at  the  door  and 
told  them  it  was  customary  there  for  the  guests  to  come 
in,  in  the  middle  of  the  night,  and  wash  the  bride  with 
whiskey. 

"  I  immediately,"  says  Shelley,  "caught  up  my  brace  of 
pistols,  and  pointing  them  both  at  him,  said  to  him,  '  I  have 
had  enough  of  your  impertinence  ;  if  you  give  me  any  more 
of  it  I  will  blow  your  brains  out ; '  on  which  he  ran  or  rather 
tumbled  downstairs,  and  I  bolted  the  doors." 

Even  before  the  honeymoon  was  over,  Harriet's  sister 
Eliza,  the  evil  genius  of  the  pair,  appeared  upon  the  scene. 
The  friend  who  was  with  them  at  the  time  thus  describes 
her  advent :  — 

"  The  house  lay,  as  it  were,  under  an  interdict ;  all  our 
accustomed  occupations  were  suspended  ;  study  was  for- 
bidden ;  reading  was  injurious  ;  to  read  aloud  might  termi- 
nate fatally.  To  go  abroad  was  death  ;  to  stay  at  home  the 
grave.  Bysshe  became  nothing  ;  I  of  course  much  less  than 
nothing,  —  a  negative  quantity  of  a  very  high  figure." 

That  Harriet  already  had  peculiar  notions  of  her  own 
was  soon  evident.     The  same  friend  writes  :  — 

"  '  What  do  you  think  of  suicide  ?  '  said  Harriet  one  day. 
'  Did  you  ever  think  of  destroying  yourself .'"  It  was  a 
puzzling  question,  for  indeed  the  thought  had  never  entered 
my  head.  '  What  do  you  think  of  matricide,  of  high  trea- 
son, of  rick-burning?  Did  you  ever  think  of  killing  any 
one  "i  of  murdering  your  mother  ?  or  setting  rick-yards  on 
fire  ?'  I  replied." 

But  Harriet  often  discoursed  at  great  length,  in  a  calm, 
resolute  manner,  of  her  purpose  of  kilHng  herself  some 
day  or  other.  Of  their  after-housekeeping  in  London 
lodgings  Hogg  writes  :  — 


io8  HOME  LIFE  OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

"  Our  dinners  therefore  were  constructive,  a  dumb  show, 
a  mere  empty  idle  ceremony ;  our  only  resource  against 
absolute  starvation  was  tea.  Penny-buns  were  our  assured 
resource.  The  survivors  of  those  days  of  peril  and  hardship 
are  indebted  for  their  existence  to  the  humane  interposition 
and  succor  of  penny-buns.  A  shilling's  worth  of  penny- 
buns  for  tea.  If  the  purchase  was  intrusted  to  the  maid, 
she  got  such  buns  as  none  could  beheve  to  have  been  made 
on  earth,  proving  thereby  incontestably  that  the  girl  had 
some  direct  communication  with  the  infernal  regions,  where 
they  alone  could  have  been  procured." 

The  married  life  was  on  the  whole,  when  not  a  roaring 
farce,  almost  a  tragedy.  Harriet's  sister  was,  like  the 
poor,  always  with  them.  Shelley  grew  to  hate  her,  and 
tried  in  every  way  to  be  dehvered  from  her  presence, 
but  in  vain.  Harriet  would  not  live  without  her,  and 
paid  httle  attention  to  anybody  else  when  she  was  present. 
Two  children  were  born  to  them,  but  even  the  children 
Shelley  was  not  permitted  to  enjoy  without  the  constant 
supervision  of  Eliza.  He  became  nearly  frantic  from 
the  constant  annoyance,  and  finally  a  separation  came 
about  between  the  ill-mated  pair.  The  women  them- 
selves became  tired  of  the  moping  and  inefficient  youth, 
w^io  still  remained  poor  and  unsettled,  with  a  father  des- 
perately healthy  and  inexorable.  They  grew  tured  and 
went  away,  —  the  wife,  like  Lady  Byron,  refusing  to  go 
back  to  such  an  aimless,  rhapsodizing  husband.  And 
in  truth,  the  hardship  of  living  with  such  a  man  as 
Shelley,  for  a  woman  like  Harriet,  must  have  been  very 
great.  It  is  easy  to  understand  how  a  limited  nature  Hke 
hers  should  be  worn  out  by  the  exaction  and  impractica- 
bility of  one  like  Shelley ;  for  to  her,  most  impracticable 
would  seem  his  lofty  and  ideal  requirements.  The  part- 
ing was  not  unfriendly,  and  Shelley  always  spoke  of  her 
with  deep  kindness  and  pity,  and  she  continued  to  write 
to  him  for  some  time  after  he  had  formed  his  con- 
nection with  Mary  Godwin,  of  which  she  did  not  seem  ' 
to  disapprove.  He  had  found  a  sort  of  comfort  in  his 
intercourse  with  Mary  from  his  first  acquaintance  with  her, 


SHELLEY.  109 

and  she  was  probably  the  first  woman  he  had  ever  known 
who  in  any  way  understood  or  appreciated  him.  Some 
lines  have  been  given  in  the  "  Rehcs,"  written  to  her  at 
this  time,  which  run  thus  :  — 

"  Upon  my  heart  thy  accents  sweet 
Of  peace  and  pity  fell  like  dew 
On  flowers  half-dead.  .  .  . 

"  We  are  not  happy,  sweet !  our  state 
Is  strange  and  full  of  doubt  and  fear ; 
More  need  of  words  that  ills  abate ;  — 
Reserve  or  censure  come  not  near 
Our  sacred  friendship,  lest  there  be 
No  solace  left  for  thee  or  me." 

Shelley  and  Mary  seem  to  have  been  very  happy  with 
each  other  from  the  first,  although  they  felt  the  keenest 
sorrow  at  his  being  deprived  by  the  Court  of  Chancery  of 
the  guardianship  of  his  children,  on  the  alleged  grounds 
of  his  atheism,  and  although  they  were  inexpressibly 
pained  and  shocked  at  the  suicide  of  Harriet,  which 
occurred  about  two  years  after  the  separation. 

Her  death  seems  to  have  had  no  immediate  connec- 
tion with  any  act  of  Shelley's,  but  he  mourned  over  it 
with  great  bitterness  to  the  end  of  his  life.  He  married 
Mary  in  a  legal  manner  soon  after  Harriet's  death,  and  of 
course  a  most  violent  storm  of  detraction  and  denuncia- 
tion burst  upon  his  head.  He  soon  retired  to  Italy, 
where  he  first  met  Byron,  and  he  passed  nearly  all  the 
rest  of  his  life  there.  Poor  Harriet  was  only  twenty-two 
at  the  time  of  her  tragic  death.  Whatever  may  have 
been  the  errors  of  her  life,  she  had  suffered  much  in  their 
expiation.  After  her  return  to  her  father's  house  it  ap- 
pears that  she  was  treated  with  unkindness,  and  fell  into 
some  irregularities  of  life,  —  how  great,  remains  still  a  dis- 
puted point.  But  no  one  charges  anything  against  her 
up  to  the  time  of  her  separation  from  Shelley,  except  that 
she  was  almost  as  foolish  and  impracticable  as  himself. 

Shelley's  fancy  for  her  was  that  of  a  mere  boy,  and  his 
friend  Mr.  Peacock  thus  describes  the  conflict  of  his  feel- 
ings after  meeting  Mary  Godwin  :  — 


no  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

"  Between  his  old  feelings  towards  Harriet,  from  whom  he 
was  not  then  separated,  and  his  new  passion  for  Mary,  he 
showed  in  his  looks,  in  his  gestures,  in  his  speech,  the  state 
of  a  mind  suffering,  like  a  little  kingdom,  the  nature  of  an 
insurrection.  His  eyes  were  bloodshot,  his  hair  and  dress  dis- 
ordered.   He  frequently  repeated  the  hnes  from  Sophocles,  — 

*  Man's  happiest  lot  is  not  to  be ; 

And  when  we  tread  Hfe's  thorny  steep, 
Most  blest  are  they  who,  earliest  free, 
Descend  to  death's  eternal  sleep.' " 

Godwin,  it  appears,  tried  hard  to  re-unite  Shelley  and 
Harriet,  and  disapproved  entirely  of  the  new  connection. 
Mary  was  but  seventeen  years  old,  very  beautiful,  and 
possessed  of  genius  ;  and  her  father,  moral  considerations 
entirely  aside,  did  not  look  upon  Shelley  as  a  suitable 
husband  for  her.  But  Shelley  had  conceived  for  her 
the  one  violent,  uncontrollable  passion  of  his  hfe,  and  she 
was  very  easily  brought  under  his  influence,  in  spite  of  the 
disapproval  of  her  father.  Mary  had  not  been  brought 
up  with  conventional  ideas  upon  the  subject  of  marriage 
(her  own  mother,  Mary  Wollstonecraft,  having  had  very 
unusual  opinions  upon  that  subject),  and  she  fell  an  easy 
victim  to  Shelley's  impassioned  eloquence,  when  he  urged 
her  to  flee  with  him  from  an  uncongenial  home.  Shelley 
appeared  to  Mary  as  almost  a  divine  being,  and  her  wor- 
shipful love  never  waned,  even  during  her  long  widow- 
hood of  thirty  years'  duration.  For  Shelley,  in  the  whole 
matter,  there  seems  to  be  no  vaUd  excuse.  He  deliber- 
ately defied  the  world  and  the  world's  ways,  and  even  his 
memory  must  bear  the  fatal  consequences.  If  we  allow 
his  genius  to  excuse  his  acts,  we  are  setting  up  a  prece- 
dent which  we  have  only  to  imagine  universally  carried 
out  to  produce  not  only  moral  revolution  but  chaos 
throughout  the  social  world.  He  sinned  like  an  ordi- 
nary mortal,  he  suffered  also  in  the  same  wise,  and  in  the 
memory  of  man  he  must  be  held  to  the  same  responsi- 
biHty  as  his  fellows.  But  his  unworldliness  may  well  be 
taken  into  the  account.     He  lived  in  a  sort  of  dream- 


SHELLEY.  Ill 

world  of  his  own,  and  the  thoughts  and  opinions  and  feel- 
ings of  ordinary  men  upon  matters  of  hfe  and  conduct 
were  so  different  from  his  that  he  could  hardly  compre- 
hend the  value  they  had  in  the  eyes  of  their  possessors. 
Born  to  rank  and  wealth,  he  desired  to  induce  every  rich 
man  to  despoil  himself  of  superfluity,  and  to  create  a 
brotherhood  of  property  and  service,  and  was  ready  to 
be  the  first  one  to  lay  down  the  advantages  of  his  birth. 
Born  with  the  most  fanatical  love  of  liberty,  he  looked 
upon  all  the  conventionalities  of  the  world  as  tyranny,  and 
defied  all  restraints  of  authority  from  his  earhest  youth. 
He  believed  the  opinions  he  entertained  to  be  true,  and 
he  loved  truth  with  a  martyr's  love  ;  he  was  ready  to  sacri- 
fice station  and  fortune  and  his  dearest  affections  at  her 
shrine.  With  the  rashness  of  youth  he  proclaimed  all  the 
wildest  of  his  opinions,  and  upheld  them  with  uncompro- 
mising zeal.  In  his  acts  he  rushed  into  the  face  of  the 
world  in  the  same  defiant  manner ;  and  the  world  did  not 
fail  to  take  her  revenge  upon  him.  But  posterity  will 
do  him  justice ;  it  will  see  him,  noble,  kind,  passionate, 
generous,  tender,  brave,  with  an  unbounded  and  unques- 
tioning love  for  his  fellow-men,  with  a  holy  and  fervid  hope 
in  their  ultimate  virtue  and  happiness,  and  an  intense  and 
passionate  scorn  for  all  baseness  and  oppression. 

Already  about  his  grave  in  a  foreign  land  there  gather 
many  pilgrims,  not  only  from  his  own  country,  but  from 
beyond  the  sea ;  and  as  they  read  the  inscription  there,  — 

"  Nothing  of  him  that  doth  fade, 
But  doth  suffer  a  sea  change 
into  something  rich  and  strange,"  — 

they  think  that  the  misconceptions  which  hung  over  him 
during  life  are  gradually  suffering  such  a  change,  and  they 
thank  God  amid  their  tears. 


WASHINGTON   IRVING. 


IT  is  a  little  over  one  hundred  years  since  Washington 
Ir\'ing  was  born ;  and  it  is  nearly  thirty  years  since 
he  ceased  to  charm  the  reading  world  by  the  work  of  his 
genial  and  graceful  pen.  For  fifty  long  and  fruitful  years 
he  was  our  pride  and  boast,  and  his  memory  will  for  many 
a  long  year  yet  be  green  in  the  hearts  of  his  countrymen. 
He  was  our  first  and  best  humorist.  Before  his  advent, 
what  little  writing  had  been  done  in  this  country  was 
mostly  of  the  sentimental  and  tearful  sort.  And  for  many 
years  after  he  began  to  write,  it  was  much  the  same. 
Weeping  poetesses  filled  whole  columns  with  their  tears, 
and  in  every  local  sheet  new  Werthers  were  trying  to 
tell  of  the  worthlessness  of  life  and  the  beauties  of  dy- 
ing. Young  bards  were  inditing  odes  to  melancholy,  and 
everybody  was  chanting  in  chorus,  if  not  the  words,  at 
least  the  sentiment  of,  "  how  sublime  a  thing  it  is  to  suffer 
and  be  strong."     There  was  no  laughter  in  the  land. 

Could  a  collection  of  these  mournful  melodies  have 
been  made,  and  these  lorn  lyrists  have  been  induced  to 
glance  over  it,  it  seems  to  us  that  they  must  have  received 
it  with  inextinguishable  laughter.  Each  delicate  little  wail 
when  taken  by  itself  was  not  so  bad,  but  the  united  wail 
of  this  band  of  broken-hearted  singers  would  have  pro- 
duced, instead  of  tears,  laughter  both  long  and  deep. 
This  doleful  period  lasted  long  after  Irving  had  begun  to 
write  in  a  different  vein,  and  has  lasted  in  too  large  a 


WASHINGTON  IR VING.  1 1 3 

measure  even  to  this  day ;  but  he  began  the  corrective 
process,  and  has  had  more  influence  for  good  in  that  di- 
rection than  any  of  our  other  writers.     At  a  later  day  Dr. 
Hohnes  began  to  write  almost,  if  not  quite,  "  as  funny 
as  he  could."     Charles  G.  Leland,  in  his  "  Sunshine-in- 
Thought"  series,  in  the  old  "Knickerbocker,"  ridiculed  the 
prevaihng  weakness  so  forcibly  and  effectually  that  some 
stopped  groaning  through  sheer  shame.     Charles  Dudley 
Warner  sent  a  smile  over  the  set  features  of  the  nation 
when  he  wrote  of  his  "  Summer  in  a  Garden ;  "  and  Willis 
told  in  his  "  Fun  Jottings  "  about  some  of  the  laughs  he 
had  taken  a  pen  to.     But  none  of  these  had  the  magic 
touch  of  Irving,  although  each  in  his  own  way  was  inim- 
itable ;  and  during  these  later  years,  when  the  professional 
hiynorist  has  become  one  of  our  established  institutions, 
no  wTiter  has  arisen  to  wear  the  mantle  which  fell  from 
the  shoulders  of  Washington  Irving.     Bret  Harte,  doubt- 
less, made  us  laugh  more.     Irving  could  by  no  possibility 
ever  have  written  the  "  Heathen  Chinee,"  or  those  other 
bits  of  compressed  humor  called  Poems ;  but  Bret  Harte 
is  not  exactly  a  lineal  descendant  of  Irving.     Mark  Twain 
also  can  produce  a  roar,  a  thing  which  Irving  never  did. 
But,  though  it  has  been  a  good  thing  for  the  American  peo- 
ple to  roar  with  Mark  Twain,  we  are  all  desirous  to  see 
some  WTiter  arise  who,  with  as  keen  an  eye  as  his  for  the 
humorous  side  of  Hfe,  shall  have  a  delicacy  of  touch  which 
he  lacks,  and  a  refinement  of  expression  to  which  he  is  a 
stranger. 

Washington  Irving  was  born  in  the  city  of  New  York 
in  1783,  the  youngest  of  eleven  children  bom  to  his  par- 
ents. At  that  time  New  York  was  a  rural  city  of  twenty- 
three  thousand  inhabitants  clustered  about  the  Battery. 
The  Ir\ings  were  descendants  of  the  old  Scotch  Cove- 
nanters, and  were  strict  Presbyterians.  The  home  rule 
was  one  of  austerity  and  repression.  The  children  were 
brought  up  on  the  catechism  and  the  Thirty-Nine  Articles. 
As  they  grew  older  all  were  repelled  from  the  church  of 
the  father  by  the  severity  of  its  dogmas,  and  all  except 

8 


114  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

one  attached  themselves  to  the  Episcopal  Church.  Wash- 
ington, we  are  told  by  Mr.  Warner,  "  in  order  to  make 
sure  of  his  escape  and  fed  safe,  while  he  was  still  con- 
strained to  attend  his  father's  church,  went  stealthily  to 
Trinity  Church  at  an  early  age  and  received  the  rite  of 
confirmation."  He  was  of  a  joyous  and  genial  tempera- 
ment, full  of  life  and  vivacity,  and  not  at  all  inclined 
to  religious  seriousness.  He  was  born  with  a  paseion  for 
music,  and  was  also  a  great  lover  of  the  theatre,  i  These 
things,  in  the  eyes  of  his  father,  were  serious  evils,  and  he 
felt  great  anxiety  for  the  son's  spiritual  welfare.  The 
gladsomeness  and  sportiveness  of  the  boy's  nature  were 
things  which  he  could  not  understand,  and  he  feared  that 
they  were  of  the  Evil  One.  There  was  no  room  in  the 
darkness  of  his  religious  creed  for  anything  that  was  sim- 
ply bright  and  joyous.  To  save  one's  soul  was  the  busi- 
ness of  life ;  all  things  else  were  secondary  and  of  small 
importance.  Of  course,  he  worried  much  over  this  hand- 
some, dashing,  susceptible,  music-loving,  laughter-loving 
son,  and  doubtless  shed  many  tears  over  his  wayward- 
ness. Yet  there  was  nothing  wild  about  the  boy.  The 
writing  of  plays  seems  to  have  been  his  worst  boyish  of- 
fence. His  first  published  writings  were  audacious  satires 
upon  the  theatre,  the  actors,  and  the  local  audiences. 
They  had  some  promise,  and  attracted  some  attention  in 
the  poverty  of  those  times. 

At  the  age  of  twenty-one  he  was  in  such  delicate  health 
that  a  voyage  to  Europe  was  looked  upon  as  the  only 
means  of  saving  his  Hfe.  He  accordingly  embarked  for 
Bordeaux  and  made  an  extended  tour  of  Europe,  loiter- 
ing in  many  places  for  weeks  at  a  time,  and  laying  up  a 
store  of  memories  which  gave  him  pleasure  throughout 
life.  In  Rome  he  came  across  Washington  Allston,  then 
unknown  to  fame.  He  was  about  three  years  older  than 
Irving,  and  just  establishing  himself  as  a  painter.  Irving 
was  completely  captivated  with  the  young  Southerner, 
and  they  formed  a  very  romantic  friendship  for  each 
other. 


WASHING  TON  IR  VING.  1 1 5 

Irving  even  dreamed  of  remaining  in  Rome  and  turn- 
ing artist  himself,  tliat  he  might  ahvays  be  near  his  friend. 
He"  had  a  great  dread  of  returning  to  the  New  World  and 
settling  down  to  the  uncongenial  work  of  the  law,  and  he 
fancied  he  had  some  talent  for  art.  He  certainly  had 
one  essential  qualification,  —  a  passionate  love  of  color, 
and  an  eye  for  its  harmonies.  This  love  was  a  great  source 
of  pleasure  to  him  throughout  life.  He  always  thought 
that  he  might  have  succeeded  as  a  landscape  painter. 
However  this  might  be,  the  gift  of  color-loving  is  in  itself 
a  rich  endowment  to  any  mind.  There  are  few  purer  and 
higher  sources  of  enjoyment  in  this  life  than  this  love  of 
color,  and  it  is  a  possession  which  ought  to  be  cultivated 
in  every  child. 

But  the  art  scheme  was  soon  abandoned,  and  he  went 
on  to  London,  where  he  began  his  literary  work.  His 
name  of  Washington  attracted  considerable  attention 
there,  and  he  was  frequently  asked  if  he  was  a  relative  of 
General  Washington.  A  few  years  later,  after  he  had 
wTitten  the  "  Sketch  Book,"  two  women  were  overheard 
in  conversation  near  the  bust  of  Washington  in  a  large 
gallery.  "Mother,  who  was  Washington?"  "  Why,  my 
dear,  don't  you  know  ?  "  was  the  reply,  "  he  wrote  the 
*  Sketch  Book.'  " 

Soon  after  the  book  was  published  Irving  was  one 
night  in  the  room  with  Mrs.  Siddons,  the  Queen  of 
Tragedy.  She  carried  her  tragic  airs  even  into  private 
life,  it  is  said,  and  when  Irving  was  presented  to  her,  he, 
being  young  and  modest,  was  somewhat  taken  aback  on 
being  greeted  with  the  single  sentence,  given  in  her 
grandest  stage  voice  and  with  the  most  lofty  stateliness, 
"  You  have  made  me  weep."  He  could  find  no  words  to 
reply,  and  shrank  away  in  silence.  A  very  short  time 
after  he  met  with  her  again,  and,  although  he  sought  to 
avoid  her,  she  recognized  him  and  repeated  in  tones  as 
tragic  as  at  first,  "  You  have  made  me  weep  ;  "  which  salu- 
tation had  the  effect  of  discomfiting  Irving  for  the  second 
time. 


Ii6  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

He  returned  to  New  York  in  1806,  and  was  much 
sought  after  in  society  from  that  time  on.  It  was  a  very 
convivial  company,  that  of  old  New  York  in  the  early 
part  of  the  century,  and  Irving  entered  into  its  pleasures 
with  the  rest  of  his  friends.  Late  suppers  and  good  wine 
sometimes  rendered  these  young  men  rather  hilarious, 
and  one  evening,  going  home,  Harry  Ogden,  Irving's 
chum,  fell  through  a  grating  into  a  vault  beneath.  He 
told  Irving  next  day  that  the  solitude  was  rather  dismal  at 
first,  but  in  a  little  while,  after  the  party  broke  up,  several 
other  guests  came  along  and  fell  in  one  by  one,  and  then 
they  all  had  a  pleasant  night  of  it.  "  Who  would  have 
thought,"  said  Irving  to  Governor  Kemble,  in  alluding, 
at  the  age  of  sixty-six,  to  these  scenes  of  high  jollity,  "  that 
we  should  ever  have  lived  to  be  two  such  respectable 
old  gentlemen !  " 

It  was  during  these  years  that  he  made  the  acquaint- 
ance and  learned  to  love  so  deeply  Matilda  Hoffman,  a 
beautiful  young  girl,  daughter  of  one  of  his  older  friends. 
She  was  a  most  lovely  person,  in  body  and  mind,  and  in 
his  eyes  the  paragon  of  womanhood.  He  was  young,  ro- 
mantic, full  of  sensibility,  and  his  love  for  this  beautiful 
girl  filled  his  whole  life.  He  was  poor  and  could  not 
marry,  but  he  had  many  arguments  with  himself  about 
the  propriety  of  doing  so  even  without  an  income.  "  I 
think,"  he  finally  writes,  "  that  these  early  and  improvident 
marriages  are  too  apt  to  break  down  the  spirit  and  energy 
of  a  young  man,  and  make  him  a  hard-working,  half- 
starving,  repining  animal  all  his  days."  And  again : 
"  Young  men  in  our  country  think  it  a  great  extravagance 
to  set  up  a  horse  and  carriage  without  adequate  means, 
but  they  make  no  account  of  setting  up  a  wife  and  family, 
which  is  far  more  expensive."  But  while  he  was  looking 
about  on  every  side  for  some  way  to  better  his  fortunes, 
that  he  might  take  to  his  home  this  woman  he  loved  so 
tenderly,  her  health  began  to  fail,  and  in  a  short  time  he 
was  deprived  by  death  of  her  companionship.  His  sor- 
row was  life-long,  and  it  was  a  sorrow  which  he  held 


WASHING  TON  IR  VING.  1 1 7 

sacredly  in  his  own  heart.  He  never  mentioned  her  name, 
even  to  family  friends,  and  they  learned  to  avoid  any  al- 
lusion to  her,  he  was  so  overcome  with  emotion  when 
merely  hearing  her  name  spoken.  This  was  in  his  early 
youth,  and  throughout  a  long  hfe  he  held  himself  faithful 
to  her  memory,  —  never,  it  is  believed,  wavering  once  in 
his  allegiance.  Thackeray  refers  to  this  as  one  of  the 
most  pleasing  things  he  knew  of  Irving. 

It  was  at  this  time  that  he  was  writing  the  "  History  of 
New  York."     He  wrote  afterward  :  — 

"  When  I  became  more  calm  and  collected  I  applied  my- 
self by  way  of  occupation  to  the  finishing  of  my  work.  I 
brought  it  to  a  close  as  well  as  I  could,  and  published  it ;  but 
the  time  and  circumstances  in  which  it  was  produced  ren- 
dered me  always  unable  to  look  upon  it  with  satisfaction." 

His  countenance  long  retained  the  trace  of  his  melan- 
choly, and  he  was  ever  after  a  more  subdued  and  quiet 
man.  After  his  death  a  beautiful  picture  and  lock  of  hair 
were  found  among  his  private  papers  marked  in  his  hand- 
writing, "  Matilda  Hoffman."  He  also  kept  by  him 
throughout  life  her  Bible  and  Prayer- Book.  He  lay  with 
them  under  his  pillow  in  the  first  days  of  his  anguish,  and 
carried  them  with  him  always  in  all  lands  to  the  end  of 
his  life.  In  a  little  private  notebook  intended  only  for 
his  own  eye  were  found  these  words  after  his  death  : 
"  She  died  in  the  beauty  of  her  youth,  and  in  my  memory 
she  will  ever  be  young  and  beautiful."  Truly,  not  an  un- 
happy fate  as  the  world  goes,  —  to  live  thus  in  the  memory 
of  such  a  man.  What  would  years  and  cares  and  the 
commonplace  of  existence  have  done  for  such  a  love  as 
this,  we  wonder?  We  shall  never  know.  But  we  have 
all  seen  loves  apparently  as  pure  and  as  strong,  worn  away 
by  the  attritions  of  hfe,  —  by  the  daily  labor  for  daily 
bread,  by  little  incessant  worries  and  faults  and  foibles 
upon  the  part  of  one  or  both,  —  until  there  was  nothing 
left  of  the  early  color  of  romance ;  only  a  faded  web  of 
life  where  once  was  cloth  of  gold.     How  sweet  to  many  a 


Il8  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

faded  and  careworn  woman  would  be  the  thought  of  being 
always  young  and  beautiful  to  the  man  she  loved.  For- 
tunate Matilda  Hoffman  of  the  olden  time  ! 

In  1 817  he  went  again  to  Europe,  and  while  there  defi- 
nitely made  up  his  mind  to  look  upon  literature  as  his  pro- 
fession,—  an  almost  unheard  of  thing  in  America  at  that 
time.     He  writes  to  his  brother  :  — 

"  For  a  long  while  past  I  have  lived  almost  entirely  at 
home,  sometimes  not  leaving  the  house  for  two  or  three 
days,  and  yet  I  have  not  had  an  hour  pass  heavily  ;  so  that 
if  I  could  see  my  brothers  around  me  prospering,  and  be  re- 
lieved from  this  cloud  that  hangs  over  us  all,  I  feel  as  if  I 
could  be  contented  to  give  up  all  the  gayeties  of  life  ;  I  cer- 
tainly think  that  no  hope  of  gain,  however  flattering,  would 
tempt  me  again  into  the  cares  and  sordid  concerns  of  traf- 
fic. ...  In  protracting  my  stay  in  Europe,  I  certainly  do 
not  contemplate  pleasure,  for  I  look  forward  to  a  life  of  lone- 
liness and  of  parsimonious  and  almost  painful  economy." 

Some  time  after  this  he  wrote  to  a  friend :  — 

"  Your  picture  of  domestic  enjoyment  indeed  raises  my 
envy.  With  all  my  wandering  habits,  which  are  the  result 
of  circumstances  rather  than  of  disposition,  I  think  I  was 
formed  for  an  honest,  domestic,  uxorious  man  ;  and  I  cannot 
hear  of  my  old  cronies  snugly  nestled  down  with  good  wives 
and  fine  children  round  them,  but  I  feel  for  the  moment 
desolate  and  forlorn.  Heavens  !  what  a  hap-hazard,  scheme- 
less  life  mine  has  been,  that  here  I  should  be  at  this  time  of 
life,  youth  slipping  away,  and  scribbling  month  after  month, 
and  year  after  year,  far  from  home,  without  any  means  or 
prospect  of  entering  into  matrimony,  which  I  absolutely  be- 
lieve indispensable  to  the  happiness  and  even  comfort  of  the 
after-part  of  existence." 

He  was  thus  described  at  this  time  :  — 

"  He  was  thoroughly  a  gentleman,  not  merely  in  external 
manners  and  looks,  but  to  the  innermost  fibres  and  core  of 
his  heart ;  sweet-tempered,  gentle,  fastidious,  sensitive,  and 
gifted  with  warmest  affections  ;  the  most  delightful  and  in- 
variably interesting  companion ;  gay  and  full  of  humor,  even 


WASHINGTON  IRVING.  119 

in  spite  of  occasional  fits  of  melancholy,  which  he  was,  how- 
ever, seldom  subject  to  when  with  those  he  liked  ;  a  gift  of 
conversation  that  flowed  like  a  full  river  in  sunshine,  —  bright, 
easy,  and  abundant." 

In  his  fiftieth  year  he  returned  to  America,  far  from 
rich,  though  he  had  made  money  firom  his  books.  Al- 
though he  had  thought  he  could  not  support  a  family  of 
his  own,  he  found  himself  with  two  brothers  and  several 
nieces  upon  his  hands  for  whom  he  must  provide.  He 
was  very  fond  of  them  all  ;  and,  being  the  least  selfish  of 
men,  enjoyed  making  them  all  comfortable.  But  to  do 
so  he  had  to  be  industrious  with  his  pen,  and  he  never 
gave  himself  much  rest.  He  bought  a  home  at  Tarry- 
town,  upon  the  Hudson,  which  he  called  Sunnyside,  and 
where  he  resided  till  his  death.  The  farm  had  on  it  a 
small  Dutch  cottage,  built  about  a  century  before,  and 
inhabited  by  the  Van  Tassels.  This  was  enlarged,  still 
preserving  the  quaint  Dutch  characteristics ;  it  acquired 
a  tower  and  a  whimsical  weathercock,  the  delight  of  the 
owner,  and  became  one  of  the  most  snug  and  picturesque 
residences  on  the  river.  A  sHp  of  Melrose  ivy  was 
planted,  and  soon  overrun  the  house;  and  there  were 
shaded  nooks  and  wooded  retreats,  and  a  pretty  garden. 

It  soon  became  the  dearest  spot  on  earth  for  him ;  and 
although  it  ate  up  his  money  almost  as  fast  as  he  could 
earn  it,  he  never  thought  of  parting  with  it.  The  little 
cottage  soon  became  well  stocked.     He  writes  :  — 

"  I  have  Ebenezer's  five  girls,  and  himself  also  whenever 
he  can  be  spared  from  town,  sister  Catherine  and  her  daugh- 
ter, and  occasional  visits  from  all  the  family  connection." 

Thackeray  describes  him  as  having  nine  nieces  on  his 
hands,  and  makes  a  woful  face  over  the  fact.  He  dis- 
pensed a  charming  hospitality  here,  and  no  friend  who 
ever  visited  him  forgot  the  pleasure.  He  was  a  most 
genial  and  cordial  host,  and  loved  much  to  have  his 
friends  bring  the  children,  of  whom  he  was  passionately 


I20  HOME  LIFE  OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

fond.  His  nieces  watched  over  his  welfare  with  most 
tender  solicitude ;  and  the  cottage  at  Sunnyside,  although 
without  a  mistress,  was  truly  a  home. 

It  was  with  great  reluctance  that  he  left  it  after  his  ap- 
pointment as  minister  to  Spain,  and  all  the  pleasure  he 
received  from  that  high  mark  of  the  appreciation  of  his 
country  did  not  compensate  him  for  the  hardship  of 
leaving  home.  During  this  third  visit  to  Europe  "  it  is 
easy  to  see  that  Hfe  has  grown  rather  sombre  to  Irving,  — 
the  glamour  is  gone,  he  is  subject  to  few  illusions.  The 
show  and  pageantry  no  longer  enchant ;  they  only  weary." 
He  writes  home :  "  Amidst  all  the  splendors  of  London 
and  Paris  I  find  my  imagination  refuses  to  take  fire, 
and  my  heart  still  yearns  after  dear  little  Sunnyside." 
Those  were  exciting  times  in  Spain,  and  Irving  entered 
into  all  the  dramatic  interest  of  the  situation  with  a  real 
enthusiasm,  and  wrote  most  interesting  letters  to  friends 
at  home,  describing  the  melodrama  in  which  he  had  some- 
times an  even  perilous  interest.  Throughout  his  four 
years'  stay  the  excitement  continued,  and  the  duties  of 
minister  were  sometimes  perplexing  enough.  From  the 
midst  of  court  life,  in  1845,  he  wrote  :  — 

"  I  long  to  be  back  once  more  at  dear  little  Sunnyside, 
while  I  have  yet  strength  and  good  spirits  to  enjoy  the  sim- 
ple pleasures  of  the  country,  and  to  rally  a  happy  family  group 
once  more  around  me.  I  grudge  every  year  of  absence  that 
rolls  by.  To-morrow  I  shall  be  sixty-two  years  old.  The 
evening  of  life  is  fast  drawing  over  me  ;  still  I  hope  to  get 
back  among  my  friends  while  there  is  a  little  sunshine  left." 

In  1846  he  did  return,  and  enjoyed  thirteen  years  more 
of  happy  life  there. 

George  W.  Curtis  thus  delightfully  sketches  the  man  :  — 

"  Irving  was  as  quaint  a  figure  as  Diedrich  Knickerbocker  in 
the  preliminary  advertisement  of  the  '  History  of  New  York.' 
Thirty  years  ago  he  might  have  been  seen  on  an  autumnal 
afternoon,  tripping  with  an  elastic  step  along  Broadway, 
with  low-quartered  shoes  neatly  tied,  and  a  Talma  cloak,  — 


WASHINGTON  IRVING.  121 

a  short  garment  that  hung  from  his  shoulders  like  the  cape 
of  a  coat.  There  was  a  chirping,  cheery,  old-school  air  in 
his  appearance,  which  was  undeniably  Dutch,  and  most  har- 
monious with  the  associations  of  his  writings.  He  seemed, 
indeed,  to  have  stepped  out  of  his  own  books  ;  and  the 
cordial  grace  and  humor  of  his  address  were  delightfully 
characteristic." 

Through  all  the  honors  which  he  received  —  and  he 
was  one  of  the  most  honored  men  of  his  day  —  he  was 
always  modest,  unassuming,  and  even  diffident.  He  was 
the  most  cheerful  of  men,  and  seemed  to  diffuse  sun- 
shine wherever  he  went.  He  was  essentially  lovable,  and 
could  hardly  be  said  to  have  made  an  enemy  during  his 
hfe.  Indeed,  one  of  his  lacks  was  that  of  aggressiveness ; 
it  would  have  given  a  deeper  force  to  his  character  and 
brought  out  some  qualities  that  were  latent  in  him. 

He  died  on  the  28th  of  November,  1859,  at  the  close 
of  a  lovely  Indian-summer  day,  and  was  buried  on  a  httle 
elevation  overlooking  Sleepy  Hollow.  Near  by  winds  the 
lovely  Hudson,  up  and  down  which  go  the  white-winged 
boats  bearing  tourists  to  view  the  river  he  so  loved,  and 
over  which  hangs  the  blue  haze  he  has  so  often  described, 
softening  everything  in  its  gauzy  folds.  The  feet  of  those 
he  loved  go  in  and  out  at  Sunnyside,  and  his  memory  is 
a  benediction. 


WILLIAM   CULLEN    BRYANT. 

IN  a  fragment  of  autobiography  which  Mr.  Bryant  left 
among  his   papers,   he   speaks   thus  of  his   child- 
hood :  — 

"  So  my  time  passed  in  study,  diversified  with  labor  and 
recreation.  In  the  long  winter  evenings  and  the  stormy 
winter  days  I  read  with  my  brother  books  from  my  father's 
library',  —  not  a  large  one,  but  well  chosen.  I  remember  well 
the  delight  with  which  we  welcomed  the  translation  of  the 
Iliad  by  Pope  when  it  was  brought  to  the  house.  I  had  met 
with  passages  from  it  before,  and  thought  them  the  finest 
verses  ever  written.  My  brother  and  myself,  in  emulation 
of  ancient  heroes,  made  for  ourselves  wooden  shields,  swords, 
and  spears,  and  fashioned  old  hats  in  the  shape  of  helmets, 
with  plumes  of  tow  ;  and  in  the  barn,  when  nobody  observed 
us,  we  fought  the  battles  of  the  Greeks  and  Trojans  over 
again. 

"  I  was  always,  from  my  earliest  years,  a  delighted  ob- 
server of  external  nature,  —  the  splendors  of  a  winter  day- 
break over  the  wide  wastes  of  snow  seen  from  our  windows  ; 
the  glories  of  the  autumnal  woods :  the  gloomy  approaches 
of  the  thunderstorm,  and  its  departure  amid  sunshine  and 
rainbows  ;  the  return  of  spring  with  its  flowers  ;  and  the  first 
snowfall  of  winter.  I  cannot  say,  as  some  do,  that  I  found 
my  boyhood  the  happiest  part  of  my  life.  I  had  more  frequent 
ailments  than  afterward  ;  my  hopes  were  more  feverish  and 
impatient,  and  my  disappointments  were  more  acute  ;  the  re- 
straints on  my  liberty  of  action,  although  meant  for  my  good, 
were  irksome,  and  felt  as  fetters  that  galled  my  spirit  and 
gave  it  pain.  After-years,  if  their  pleasures  had  not  the  same 
zest,  were  passed  in  more  contentment,  and  the  more  free- 
dom of  choice  I  had,  the  better,  on  the  whole,  I  enjoyed  life." 


WILLIAM   CULLEN  BRYANT.  123 

Among  the  prayers  of  his  childhood  he  mentions  that 
he  often  prayed  that  he  might  be  endowed  with  poetic 
genius,  and  write  verses  which  should  endure.  And  he 
began  at  a  very  early  age  to  make  attempts  in  this  direc- 
tion, which  seem  somewhat  less  crude  than  the  mass  of 
such  productions.  He  was  taught  Latin  by  the  Rev. 
Thomas  Snell,  his  uncle,  and  Greek  by  the  Rev.  Moses 
Hallock,  a  neighboring  minister,  who  boarded  and  in- 
structed him  for  a  dollar  a  week.  He  continued  his 
studies  at  Williams  College,  although  he  never  wag  gradu- 
ated, being  taken  from  college  from  motives  of  economy. 

The  town  of  Cummington,  where  he  was  born,  is  a 
little  hamlet  among  the  hills  in  Hampshire  County  in 
western  Massachusetts.  The  country  around  is  moun- 
tainous, and  the  valleys  very  beautiful.  The  poet  was 
always  much  attached  to  the  region,  and  when  he  had 
become  an  old  man  bought  the  old  family  home  and 
fitted  it  up  as  a  summer  residence,  where  he  used  to  gather 
together  the  remaining  members  of  the  family,,  and  enjoy 
himself  highly  in  exploring  the  country  round  about  as 
he  had  done  in  the  days  of  his  boyhood.  Many  stories 
are  told  of  his  pedestrian  feats,  even  after  he  was  seventy- 
five  years  old ;  and  he  sometimes  walked  ten  or  twelve 
miles  when  in  his  eightieth  year.  He  retained  his  boyish 
love  for  plants  and  flowers,  and  was  as  enthusiastic  as  in 
youth  over  a  rare  specimen  or  a  beautiful  bit  of  land- 
scape. He  further  evinced  his  interest  in  the  old  home 
by  presenting  the  town  with  a  fine  library  of  six  thousand 
volumes,  and  building  a  suitable  house  for  its  accommo- 
dation upon  a  beautiful  site  which  he  purchased  for  that 
purpose. 

Upon  leaving  school  Mr.  Bryant  pursued  the  study  of 
law,  and  entered  upon  its  practice,  first  in  Plainfield,  and 
afterward  in  Great  Barrington,  a  pleasant  village  in  Berk- 
shire County,  on  the  banks  of  the  Housatonic.  While 
studying  at  Worthington,  a  distinguished  friend  of  his 
father  came  from  Rhode  Island  upon  a  visit,  bringing 
with  him  a  beautiful  and  accomplished  daughter,  to  whom 


124  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

the  young  poet  at  once  lost  his  heart.  The  passion 
seems  to  have  been  reciprocated,  if  we  can  judge  by  the 
assiduity  with  which  the  correspondence  was  carried  on 
after  her  return ;  but  some  unknown  cause  seems  to  have 
broken  off  the  fascinating  romance,  and  after  a  year  or 
two  we  hear  of  it  no  more.  That  the  end  was  painful  to 
Mr.  Bryant,  we  have  reason  to  suspect  from  his  poems 
and  letters ;  but  as  to  how  the  lady  felt,  we  have  no  evi- 
dence. The  verses  show  little  promise  of  the  work  which 
the  young  poet  soon  afterward  did,  but  they  are  not 
entirely  without  charm  :  — 

"  The  home  thy  presence  made  so  dear, 
I  leave,  —  the  parting  hour  is  past ; 
Yet  thy  sweet  image  haunts  me  here, 
In  tears  as  when  1  saw  thee  last. 

"  It  meets  me  where  the  woods  are  deep, 
It  comes  when  twilight  tints  depart. 
It  bends  above  me  while  I  sleep. 
With  pensive  looks  that  pierce  my  heart." 

In  another  little  poem  we  are  informed,  — 

"  The  gales  of  June  were  breathing  by, 
The  twilight's  last  faint  rays  were  gleaming, 
And  midway  in  the  moonless  sky 
The  star  of  Love  was  brightly  beaming. 

"  When  by  the  stream,  the  birchen  boughs 
Dark  o'er  the  level  marge  were  playing, 
The  maiden  of  my  secret  vows 
I  met,  alone,  and  idly  straying. 

"  And  since  that  hour,  —  for  then  my  love 
Consenting  heard  my  passion  pleaded,  — 
Full  well  she  knows  the  star  of  Love, 
And  loves  the  stream  with  beeches  shaded." 

The  poet  had  quite  a  lengthened  season  of  darkness 
and  despair  after  this  love-dream  came  to  an  end,  and 
it  must  be  confessed  wrote  a  good  deal  of  very  bad 
poetry,  none  of  which  he  placed  in  collections  of  his 
poems,  but  some  of  which  have  been  published  by  his 
biographer.     They  are  rather  worse  than  the  usual  run 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT.  125 

of  such  poems,  which  may  indicate  that  the  feehng  was 
really  deeper,  — too  deep  for  expression  in  verse,  — or  that 
it  was  not  as  deep  and  lasting  as  some  of  the  first  loves 
of  poets.  As  he  had  already  written  "  Thanatopsis " 
and  other  fine  poems,  it  is  rather  surprising  that  there 
are  so  few  gleams  of  the  true  poetic  fire  in  these  amatory 
verses. 

As  is  usual  in  such  cases,  he  did  not  recover  from  the 
old  love  until  he  had  discovered  a  new  one,  and  he  did 
this  in  his  new  residence,  not  long  after  his  arrival  there. 
The  second  lady  of  his  choice  was  Miss  Fanny  Fairchild, 
daughter  of  a  well-to-do  and  respectable  farmer  on  the 
Green  River.  She  was  nineteen  years  old  at  the  time,  a 
"very  pretty  blonde,  small  in  person,  with  light-brown  hair, 
gray  eyes,  a  graceful  shape,  a  dainty  foot,  transparent  and 
delicate  hands,  and  a  wonderfully  frank  and  sweet  ex- 
pression of  face."  She  was  as  sensible  as  beautiful,  and 
had  great  charm  of  manner,  which  she  retained  to  the 
end  of  her  life.  He  soon  engaged  himself  to  Miss  Fair- 
child,  and  the  course  of  their  love  ran  smoothly  through- 
out a  long  Hfe.  To  show  with  what  deep  feeling  and 
earnestness  they  entered  upon  their  new  relations,  the 
following  prayer,  dated  1820,  has  been  printed,  which 
was  found  among  Mr.  Bryant's  private  papers  after  his 
death :  — 

"  May  God  Almighty  mercifully  take  care  of  our  happiness 
here  and  hereafter.  May  we  ever  continue  constant  to  each 
other,  and  mindful  of  our  mutual  promises  of  attachment 
and  truth.  In  due  time,  if  it  be  the  will  of  Providence,  may 
we  become  more  nearly  connected  with  each  other,  and  to- 
gether may  we  lead  a  long,  happy,  and  innocent  life,  without 
any  diminution  of  affection  till  we  die.  May  there  never  be 
any  jealousy,  distrust,  coldness,  or  dissatisfacdon  between 
us,  nor  occasion  for  any, —  nothing  but  kindness,  forbear- 
ance, mutual  confidence,  and  attention  to  each  other's  happi- 
ness. And  that  we  may  be  less  unworthy  of  so  great  a 
blessing,  may  we  be  assisted  to  cultivate  all  the  benign  and 
charitable  affections  and  offices,  not  only  toward  each  other, 
but  toward  our  neighbors,  the  human  race,  and  all  the 


126  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

creatures  of  God.  And  in  all  things  wherein  we  have  done 
ill,  may  we  properly  repent  our  error,  and  may  God  forgive 
us,  and  dispose  us  to  do  better.  When  at  last  we  are  called 
to  render  back  the  life  we  have  received,  may  our  deaths  be 
peaceful,  and  may  God  take  us  to  his  bosom.  All  which 
may  He  grant  for  the  sake  of  the  Messiah." 

If  ever  a  prayer  was  granted,  it  seems  to  have  been  so 
in  this  instance,  for  in  every  detail  it  was  fulfilled  in  the 
lives  which  followed.  So  rarely  beautiful  a  marriage  has 
seldom  been  seen,  as  the  one  which  was  entered  into 
in  this  solemn  and  lofty  manner,  by  this  young  and  high- 
minded  couple.  The  days  of  their  pilgrimage  were  many, 
but  they  grew  more  and  more  beautiful  until  the  final 
parting;  and  when  the  separation  at  last  came,  in  the 
fulness  of  time,  the  old  poet  mourned,  with  a  grief  which 
could  not  be  comforted,  for  the  companion  of  his  youth, 
the  delight  of  his  mature  years,  and  the  idol  of  his  old 
age.  Forty-five  years  they  lived  together,  and  after  her 
death  he  wrote  to  his  brother  :  — 

"  We  have  been  married  more  than  forty-five  years,  and 
all  my  plans,  even  to  the  least  important,  were  laid  with  some 
reference  to  her  judgment  or  her  pleasure.  I  always  knew 
it  would  be  the  greatest  calamity  of  my  life  to  lose  her,  but 
not  till  the  blow  fell  did  I  know  how  heavy  it  would  be,  and 
what  a  solitude  the  earth  would  seem  without  her." 

To  another  brother  he  said  :  — 

"Her  life  seemed  to  me  to  close  prematurely,  so  useful 
was  she,  and  so  much  occupied  in  doing  good ;  and  yet  she 
was  in  her  seventieth  year.  It  is  now  more  than  forty-five 
years  since  we  were  married,  —  a  long  time,  as  the  world  goes, 
for  husband  and  wife  to  live  together.  Bitter  as  the  sepa- 
ration is,  I  give  thanks  that  she  has  been  spared  to  me  so 
long,  and  that  for  nearly  a  half-century  I  have  had  the  bene- 
fit of  her  counsel  and  her  example." 

In  a  brief  memoir  of  their  intercourse,  prepared  for  the 
eyes  of  his  daughters  alone,  he  said  :  — 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT. 


127 


"  I  never  wrote  a  poem  that  I  did  not  repeat  to  her,  and 
take  her  judgment  upon  it.  I  found  its  success  with  the 
public  to  be  precisely  in  proportion  to  the  impression  it 
made  upon  her.  She  loved  my  verses,  and  judged  them 
kindly,  but  did  not  like  them  all  equally  well." 

One  who  knew  her  well  thus  describes  her  character :  — 

"  Never  did  poet  have  a  truer  companion,  a  sincerer 
spiritual  helpmate,  than  Mr.  Bryant  in  his  wife.  Refined 
in  taste,  and  elevated  in  thought,  she  was  characterized 
ahke  by  goodness  and  gentleness.  Modest  in  her  ways, 
she  lived  wholly  for  him  ;  his  welfare,  his  happiness,  his 
fame,  were  the  chief  objects  of  her  ambition.  To  smooth 
his  pathway,  to  cheer  his  spirit,  to  harmonize  every  discord- 
ant element  of  life,  were  purposes  for  the  accomplishment 
of  which  no  sacrifice  on  her  part  could  be  too  great." 

Another  who  visited  them  familiarly  in  their  home 
wrote  :  — 

"  In  the  autumn  of  1863,  we  visited  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Bryant 
at  West  Point,  where  they  occupied  Mr.  John  Bigelow's 
charming  cottage,  '  The  Squirrels.'  From  there  we  accom- 
panied them  to  Roslyn,  and  spent  a  week  under  their  own 
roof-tree.  How  much  we  enjoyed  those  days,  I  need  not 
say.  Mrs.  Bryant's  health  was  very  delicate,  and  she  sat 
much  in  her  large  arm-chair  by  the  open  wood-fire  which 
blazed  under  the  old  tiles  of  the  chimney-place,  Mr.  Bryant 
sat  at  her  feet  when  he  read  in  the  autumn  twilight  those 
exquisite  lines,  '  The  Life  that  Is.'  Such  was  our  last  meet- 
ing with  our  dear  Mrs.  Bryant.  I  never  saw  her  again,  but 
the  thought  of  her  dwells  like  a  sweet  strain  of  music  amid 
the  varied  notes  of  human  hfe,  and  will  be  ours  again  when 
'beyond  these  voices  there  is  peace.'  The  union  between 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Bryant  was  a  poem  of  the  tenderest  rhythm. 
Any  of  us  who  remember  Mr.  Bryant's  voice  when  he  said 
'  Frances '  will  join  in  his  hope  that  she  kept  the  same  be- 
loved name  in  heaven,  I  remember  alluding  to  those  ex- 
quisite lines,  '  The  Future  Life,'  to  Mrs.  Bryant,  and  her 
replying,  'Oh,  my  dear,  I  am  always  sorry  for  any  one  who 
sees  me  after  reading  those  lines,  they  must  be  so  dis- 
appointed.'   Beatrice   and   Laura  have   not  received  such 


128  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

tributes  from  their  poets,  for  Mrs.  Bryant's  husband  was  her 
poet  and  her  lover  at  seventy  as  at  seventeen." 

After  Mrs.  Bryant  had  been  dead  seven  years,  Mr. 
Bryant  wrote  the  following  poem,  showing  how  tenderly 
he  cherished  her  memory :  — 

The  mom  hath  not  the  glory  that  it  wore, 

Nor  doth  the  day  so  beautifully  die, 
Since  I  can  call  thee  to  my  side  no  more, 
To  gaze  upon  the  sky. 

For  thy  dear  hand,  with  each  return  of  Spring, 

I  sought  in  sunny  nooks  the  flowers  she  gave ; 
I  seek  them  still,  and  sorrowfully  bring 
The  choicest  to  thy  grave. 

Here,  where  I  sit  alone,  is  sometimes  heard. 

From  the  great  world,  a  whisper  of  my  name, 
Joined,  haply,  to  some  kind  commending  word, 
By  those  whose  praise  is  fame. 

And  then,  as  if  I  thought  thou  still  wert  nigh, 

I  turn  me,  half-forgetting  thou  art  dead, 
To  read  the  gentle  gladness  in  thine  eye 
That  once  I  might  have  read. 

I  turn,  but  see  thee  not ;  before  my  eyes 

The  image  of  a  hillside  mound  appears, 
Where  all  of  thee  that  passed  not  to  the  skies 
Was  laid  with  bitter  tears. 

And  I,  whose  thoughts  go  back  to  happier  days 
That  fled  with  thee,  would  gladly  now  resign 
All  that  the  world  can  give  of  fame  or  praise 
For  one  sweet  look  of  thine. 

Thus  ever,  when  I  read  of  generous  deeds. 

Such  words  as  thou  didst  once  delight  to  hear. 
My  heart  is  wrung  with  anguish  as  it  bleeds 
To  think  thou  art  not  near. 

And  now  that  I  can  talk  no  more  with  thee 

Of  ancient  friends  and  days  too  fair  to  last, 
A  bitterness  blends  with  the  memory 
Of  all  that  happy  past. 

That  past  had,  indeed,  been  happy  and  most  success- 
ful from  every  worldly  point  of  view.     He  had  published 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT.  129 

his  poems,  while  still  a  young  man,  and  they  had  made 
him  famous  at  once.  For  more  than  fifty  years  he  was 
honored  as  one  of  the  first  of  the  poets  of  America,  and 
for  a  large  part  of  that  time  he  was  held  as  indisputably 
the  first  in  rank.  His  work  received  honors  and  com- 
mendation over  the  sea  as  well  as  at  home,  almost  from 
the  first.  It  seems  very  curious  to  us  now  to  think  of 
his  selling  the  very  finest  of  his  poems  for  two  dollars 
apiece;  yet  he  did  that,  and  seemed  satisfied  with  the 
compensation.  In  later  life,  when  two  hundred  dollars 
would  have  been  gladly  paid  him  for  such  poems,  he 
declined  to  wTite,  saying  that  no  man  should  write 
poetry  in  old  age.  The  greater  part  of  his  poetry  was 
\vritten  before  he  went  to  New  York  and  became  editor- 
in-chief  of  the  "  Evening  Post."  After  that  time  he  was 
always  driven  by  newspaper  work  and  involved  in  politi- 
cal controversy,  and  rarely  wrote  verses.  In  old  age  he 
made  his  translations  of  the  ''  Iliad  "  and  the  "  Odyssey," 
which  were  very  remarkable  works  for  a  man  of  his 
years ;  but  he  seldom  wrote  an  original  poem,  although 
what  he  did  write  scarcely  showed  a  falling  off  from  the 
work  of  his  prime. 

He  was  very  conscientious  in  his  work  as  an  editor, 
and  was  honored  by  the  entire  nation  for  the  noble  and 
patriotic  course  he  took  at  the  time  of  the  anti-slavery 
excitement,  and  throughout  the  Civil  War.  Men  will 
long  remember  the  brave  and  spirited  utterances  of 
his  paper  during  that  time  that  so  tried  men's  souls. 
He  did  much,  during  his  long  career  as  an  editor,  for 
American  literature,  for  American  art,  and  for  the 
general  culture  of  his  countrymen.  In  his  numerous 
visits  to  Europe  he  learned  much  of  the  workings  of 
the  institutions  of  the  Old  Worid,  and  gave  his  readers 
the  benefit  of  his  studies  of  the  comparative  merits  of 
Old  and  New  World  methods ;  and  while  always  fair 
in  his  judgments,  he  was  always  patriotic,  and  stood 
gallantly  by  his  own  land.  He  was  much  honored 
while  abroad,  as  well  as  at  home,  and  made  acquaint- 

9 


130  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

ance  with  many  distinguished  men  in  foreign  lands.  Mr. 
Bryant  had  been  brought  up  a  Unitarian,  and  he  main- 
tained his  connection  with  that  church  throughout  life. 
Many  of  his  dearest  friends  were  among  the  ministers  of 
that  denomination,  and  he  wrote  many  of  his  most  beau- 
tiful hymns  for  occasions  connected  with  that  church. 
He  was  always  a  devoutly  religious  man,  but  grew  even 
more  so  in  later  Hfe.  During  a  long  sickness  which  his 
wife  had  in  Naples  in  1858,  his  thoughts  became  more 
and  more  fixed  upon  this  subject ;  and  meeting  with  an 
old  friend  there,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Waterson,  he  opened  his 
mind  to  him  as  perhaps  he  had  never  done  to  any  one 
before.     IMr.  Waterson  tells  us  :  — 

"  At  this  time  I  received  a  note  from  him  stating  that 
there  was  a  subject  of  interest  upon  which  he  would  like 
to  converse  with  me.  On  the  following  day,  the  weather 
being  delightful,  we  walked  in  the  Villa  Reale,  the  royal 
park  or  garden,  overlooking  the  Bay  of  Naples.  Never  can 
I  forget  the  beautiful  spirit  that  breathed  through  every 
word  he  uttered,  —  the  reverent  love,  the  confiding  trust, 
the  aspiring  hope,  the  rooted  faith.  Every  thought,  every 
view,  was  generous  and  comprehensive.  Anxiously  watch- 
ing, as  he  had  been  doing,  in  that  twilight  boundary  be- 
tween this  world  and  another,  over  one  more  precious  to 
him  than  life  itself,  the  divine  trutlis  and  promises  had 
come  home  to  his  mind  with  new  power.  He  said  he  had 
never  united  himself  with  the  Church,  which  with  his 
present  feehngs  he  would  most  gladly  do.  He  then  asked 
if  it  would  be  agreeable  to  me  to  come  to  his  room  on  the 
morrow,  and  administer  the  Communion,  — adding  that  as  he 
had  not  been  baptized,  he  desired  that  ordinance  at  the 
same  time.  The  day  following  was  the  Sabbath,  and  a 
most  heavenly  day.  In  fulfilment  of  his  wishes,  in  his 
own  quiet  room,  a  company  of  seven  persons  celebrated 
together  the  Lord's  Supper.  With  hymns,  selections  from 
the  Scripture,  and  devotional  exercises,  we  went  back  in 
thought  to  the  large  upper-room  where  Christ  first  insti- 
tuted the  Holy  Supper  in  the  midst  of  his  disciples.  Pre- 
vious to  the  breaking  of  bread,  William  Cullen  Bryant  was 
baptized.     With   snow-white  head   and  flowing    beard,  he 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT.  131 

Stood  like  one  of  the  ancient  prophets  ;  and  never,  perhaps, 
since  the  days  of  the  Apostles,  has  a  truer  disciple  pro- 
fessed allegiance  to  the  Divine  Master." 

A  purer  and  nobler  life  than  Mr.  Bryant  led  has  hardly 
been  chronicled  in  our  day ;  and  the  quiet  and  calm  of 
his  closing  years  was  a  fitting  end  to  such  a  life.  He  was 
tenderly  cared  for  during  these  years  by  his  daughters,  to 
whom  he  was  most  devotedly  attached.  His  son-in-law, 
Parke  Godwin,  thus  writes  of  the  closing  years  :  — 

"  It  was  very  curious  to  his  friends  to  observe  how  he 
had  mellowed  with  time.  The  irritabilities  of  his  earlier 
days  had  been  wholly  overcome  ;  his  reluctance  to  mingle 
with  men  was  quite  gone ;  and  old  age,  which  makes  so  many 
of  us  exacting  and  crabbed,  if  not  morose,  imparted  to  him 
additional  gentleness  and  sweetness.  He  had  learned  to  live 
more  and  more  in  the  happiness  of  others,  and  was  rewarded 
for  his  unconscious  devotion  by  new  streams  of  happiness 
constantly  opening  in  his  bosom." 

He  even  learned  to  take  good-naturedly  what  had 
annoyed  him  a  good  deal  in  an  earUer  time,  namely,  the 
results  of  his  fame.  He  writes  thus  to  a  friend  in  ex- 
treme old  age  :  — 

"  Is  there  a  penny-post,  do  you  think,  in  the  world  to 
come  ?  Do  people  there  write  for  autographs  to  those 
who  have  gained  a  little  notoriety?  Do  women  there 
send  letters  asking  for  money  ?  Do  boys  persecute  liter- 
ary men  with  requests  for  a  course  of  reading  ?  Are  there 
offices  in  that  sphere  which  are  coveted,  and  to  obtain 
which  men  are  pestered  to  write  letters  of  recommenda- 
tion .f*  If  anything  of  this  kind  takes  place  in  the  spirit- 
world  it  may,  perhaps,  be  of  a  purgatorial  nature,  or 
perhaps  be  the  fate  of  the  incorrigible  sinner.  Here  on 
earth  this  discipline  never  ends  ;  and  if  it  exists  at  all  in 
the  other  world,  it  is  of  a  kind  which  will,  of  course,  never 
cease.  On  this  account  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  the 
punishment  for  sin  may  be  of  endless  duration  ;  for  here  the 
annoyances  and  miseries  which  I  have  mentioned  only  cease 
with  death,  and  in  the  other  world,  where  there  is  no  death, 
they  will,  of  course,  never  come  to  an  end." 


132  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

To  another  correspondent  he  writes  :  — 

*'  How  is  it  in  the  world  to  come  ?  Will  patience  have 
had  her  perfect  work  in  this  sphere,  or  is  the  virtue  to  be 
exercised  there,  until  we  shall  have  acquired  an  evenness  of 
temper  which  no  possible  provocation  can  disturb  ?  Are  the 
bores  to  be  all  penned  in  a  corner  by  themselves,  or  are  they 
to  be  let  loose  to  educate  the  saints  to  the  subhmest  degree 
of  patience  of  which  our  nature  is  capable  ?  These  are  deep 
questions.  I  do  not  remember  that  you  have  given  any  spe- 
cial attention  to  the  use  of  bores  in  the  moral  government  of 
the  world  in  your  book  on  'The  Problem  of  Human  Destiny.' 
I  admit  their  utility  as  a  class  :  they  serve  a  most  excellent 
purpose ;  but  whether  we  are  to  be  annoyed  with  them  in 
the  next  world  is  the  doubt.  Some  of  them  are  most  worthy 
people,  and  capital  Christians,  and  cannot  be  kept  out  of 
Paradise ;  but  will  they  be  allowed  to  torment  the  elect 
there  ?  " 

Probably  the  title  of  the  Great  American  could  be 
as  fittingly  applied  to  Bryant  as  to  any  man  our 
nation  has  produced.  He  has  been  happily  called  the 
Puritan  Greek  ;  and  this  epithet  apphes  equally  well  to  his 
life  and  to  his  writings.  If  he  was  a  Stoic  in  his  earlier 
years,  he  was  as  unmistakably  a  Christian  in  later  life. 
During  both  periods  he  was  pure  as  ice,  lofty  in  thought, 
noble  in  deed,  —  an  inspiration  toward  the  True  Life  to 
all  who  watched  his  course.  No  errors  of  passion  or  of 
overheated  blood  did  he  have  to  mourn  over,  even  in 
youth;  yet  he  was  not  cold  or  unimpassioned,  as  his 
deep  devotion  throughout  life  to  the  woman  of  his 
choice  proved.  He  led  emphatically  the  intellectual 
life,  with  as  little  admixture  of  the  flesh  as  possible ;  yet 
the  warm  currents  of  feeling  were  never  dried  up  in  his 
nature,  but  bubbled  up  freshly  to  the  end.  He  hved 
largely  on  the  heights  of  life,  yet  he  was  not  unchari- 
table to  the  weaknesses  and  follies  he  saw  everywhere 
about  him,  but  rather  looked  upon  them  with  a  half- 
pitying  tenderness ;  and  he  dropped  a  tear  occasionally 
where  the  integrity  of  his  own  nature  counselled  a  stern 
reproof. 


RALPH   WALDO   EMERSON. 

''  T  HAVE  seen  Emerson,  the  first  man  I  have  ever 
X  seen,"  wrote  George  Eliot  in  her  diary  many  years 
ago.  Carlyle  uses  similar  expressions  in  his  letters  at 
least  a  score  of  times.  Sentences  like  the  following  ap- 
pear very  often  :  — 

"  It  remains  true  and  will  remain,  what  I  have  often  told 
you,  that  properly  there  is  no  voice  in  this  world  which  is 
completely  human  to  me  but  your  voice  only." 

Again :  — 

"In  the  whole  world  I  hardly  get  to  my  spoken  human  word 
any  other  word  of  response  that  is  authentically  human. 
God  help  us,  this  is  growing  a  very  lonely  place,  this  dis- 
tracted dog-kennel  of  a  world." 

Indeed,  the  personality  of  Emerson  seems  to  have  pro- 
duced a  very  marked  effect  upon  all  the  great  men  and 
women  with  whom  he  came  in  contact.  We  find  that  he 
was  often  described  as  an  angel  in  appearance  in  his 
younger  days.  Here  are  one  or  two  instances  :  Of  his 
appearance  to  them  in  their  stony  solitude  at  Craigen- 
puttoch  Carlyle  afterwards  wrote  to  Emerson :  — 

"  Among  the  figures  I  can  recollect  as  visiting  us  in  our 
Nithsdale  hermitage,  —  all  like  apparitions  now,  bringing  with 
them  airs  from  heaven,  or  else  blasts  from  the  other  region, 
—  there  is  perhaps  not  one  of  a  more  undoubtedly  supernal 
character  than  yourself,  —  so  pure  and  still,  with  intents  so 
charitable  ;  and  then  vanishing,  too,  so  soon  into  the  azure 
inane,  as  an  apparition  should." 


134  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

Mrs.  Carlyle  always  spoke  of  this  visit  of  Emerson  to 
them  there  as  a  visitation  from  an  angel. 

Mr.  Charles  Congdon  thus  writes  in  the  "  Reminis- 
cences of  a  Journalist :  "  — 

"  One  day  there  came  into  our  pulpit  the  most  gracious  of 
mortals,  with  a  face  all  benignity,  who  gave  out  the  first 
hymn  and  made  the  first  prayer  as  an  angel  might  have  read 
and  prayed.  Our  choir  was  a  pretty  good  one,  but  its  best 
was  coarse  and  discordant  after  Emerson's  voice." 

The  ancestors  of  Emerson  were  all  of  clean  pure  blood. 
Behind  him  were  many  generations  of  fine  old  New  Eng- 
land ministers,  and  he  was  but  the  natural  product  of  his 
race  in  character,  —  though  from  what  source  sprang  the 
consummate  flower  of  his  genius  it  is  hard  to  tell.  He  was 
brought  up  to  all  good  things,  under  the  immediate  eyes 
of  a  superior  mother  and  a  gifted  aunt.  He  was  a  fine 
scholar  during  his  college  days,  and  entered  the  Unitarian 
ministry  when  quite  young.  He  also  married  young,  but 
early  lost  his  wife,  and  soon  afterward  retired  from  the 
ministry  to  devote  himself  to  literature. 

In  September,  1835,  Emerson  was  married  for  the 
second  time,  to  Miss  Lydia  Jackson  of  Plymouth.  The 
wedding  took  place  in  the  fine  old  mansion  known  as 
the  Winslow  house.  After  the  marriage  they  went  to 
reside  in  Concord,  in  the  house  where  he  passed  the 
rest  of  his  life,  and  where  his  family  still  hve.  This  is  the 
plain,  square,  wooden  house,  with  horse-chestnuts  in  the 
front  yard  and  evergreens  around  it,  which  has  often  been 
described  by  visitors  to  Concord.  Near  by  is  the  orchard 
planted  by  Emerson,  and  two  miles  away  his  wood-lot, 
which  he  describes  to  Carlyle  as  his  new  plaything,  and 
where  he  proposed  to  build  a  tower  to  which  to  flee 
from  intrusive  visitors.  Of  the  planting  of  the  orchard 
he  thus  writes  :  — 

"You  are  to  know  that  in  these  days  I  lay  out  a  patch  of 
orchard  near  my  house,  very  much  to  the  improvement,  as  all 
the  household  affirm,  of  our  homestead.     Though   I   have 


RALPH   WALDO  EMERSON.  135 

little  skill  in  these  things,  and  must  borrow  that  of  my  neigh- 
bors, yet  the  works  of  the  garden  and  orchard  at  this 
season  are  fascinating,  and  will  eat  up  days  and  weeks ;  and 
a  brave  scholar  should  shun  it  Hke  gambling,  and  take  refuge 
in  cities  and  hotels  from  these  pernicious  enchantments. 
For  the  present  I  stay  in  the  new  orchard." 

In  due  time  came  the  little  troop  of  children,  to  gladden 
the  home  and  to  be  a  perpetual  wonder  and  delight  to 
the  father.  In  his  essay  on  "Domestic  Life"  he  thus 
talks  of  the  little  one  :  — 

"  The  size  of  the  nestler  is  comic,  and  its  tiny  beseeching 
weakness  is  compensated  perfectly  by  the  happy,  patronizing 
look  of  the  mother,  who  is  a  sort  of  high  reposing  Providence 
toward  it.  Welcome  to  the  parents  the  puny  struggler, 
strong  in  his  weakness,  —  his  little  arms  more  irresistible 
than  the  soldier's,  his  lips  touched  with  persuasion  which 
Chatham  and  Pericles  in  manhood  had  not.  His  unaffected 
lamentations  when  he  Hfts  up  his  voice  on  high,  or,  more 
beautiful,  the  sobbing  child,  soften  all  hearts  to  pity  and  to 
mirthful  and  clamorous  compassion.  His  ignorance  is  more 
charming  than  all  knowledge,  and  his  httle  sins  more  be- 
witching than  any  virtue." 

Emerson  was  never  a  rich  man,  and  his  home  was  al- 
ways so  ordered  as  to  come  within  the  scope  of  his  limited 
income ;  but  it  was  always  attractive  and  charming,  and 
pervaded  by  an  air  of  dignity  and  repose.  And  that  in 
it  he  could  dispense  hospitahty  in  the  old  royal  manner 
is  shown  by  the  many  times  he  invites  Carlyle  to  come 
and  spend  a  year  with  him,  and  seriously  urges  him  to  do 
so.  Thoreau  availed  himself  of  such  invitation,  and  spent 
months  at  a  time  in  Emerson's  home.  One  wonders  if  Mrs. 
Emerson  received  such  instruction  as  her  husband  gives 
in  the  essay  just  mentioned,  and  if  she  profited  by  it :  — 

"  I  pray  you,  O  excellent  wife,  not  to  cumber  yourself  and 
me  to  get  a  rich  dinner  for  this  man  or  this  woman  who  has 
alighted  at  our  gate,  nor  a  bed-chamber  made  ready  at  too 
great  a  cost.  These  things,  if  they  are  curious  in,  they  can 
get  for  a  dollar  at  any  village.    But  let  this  stranger,  if  he  will, 


136 


HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 


in  your  looks,  in  your  accent  and  behavior,  read  your  heart 
and  earnestness,  your  thought  and  will,  —  which  he  cannot 
buy  at  any  price  in  any  village  or  city,  and  which  he  may  well 
travel  fifty  miles,  and  dine  sparely  and  sleep  hard,  in  order 
to  behold.  Certainly  let  the  board  be  spread,  and  let  the 
bed  be  dressed  for  the  traveller,  but  let  not  the  emphasis 
of  hospitality  lie  in  these  things.  Honor  to  the  house  where 
they  are  simple  to  the  verge  of  hardship,  so  that  there  the 
intellect  is  awake  and  reads  the  law  of  the  universe,  the  soul 
worships  truth  and  love,  honor  and  courtesy  flow  into  all 
deeds." 

If  the  American  people  had  heeded  such  wise  words 
as  these  the  old-fashioned  virtue  of  hospitality  would  not 
have  become  so  rare  among  us.  The  "  emphasis  of  hos- 
pitality" has  been  placed  upon  the  material  things  to  such 
an  extent  that  one  hardly  dares  to  invite  his  friend  now, 
unless  it  be  to  an  elaborate  feast ;  and  the  labor,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  expense,  of  preparing  the  elaborate  feast  is 
so  great  that  more  and  more  we  neglect  to  call  our  friends 
around  us,  and  to  bind  their  hearts  to  ours  by  lovmg  and 
tender  ministrations. 

Let  us  learn  of  Emerson  the  meaning  of  economy. 
He  says :  — 

"  Parched  corn  eaten  to-day  that  I  may  have  roast  fowl 
to  my  dinner  Sunday  is  a  baseness  ;  but  parched  corn  and 
a  house  with  one  apartment,  that  I  may  be  free  of  all  per- 
turbations, that  I  may  be  serene  and  docile  to  what  the  mind 
shall  speak,  and  quit  and  road-ready  for  the  lowest  mission 
of  knowledge  or  good-will,  is  frugality  for  gods  and  heroes." 

This  was  the  sort  of  frugality  that  Thoreau  practised  in 
his  hut  on  Walden  Pond,  and  it  is  a  frugahty  which  has 
made  him  famed  throughout  the  hero-worshipping  world. 

The  charm  of  Emerson's  home  Hfe  lay  largely  in  his 
manners,  which  were  simple,  yet  faultless.  He  greeted 
his  friends  with  all  the  mildness  and  serenity  of  the  very 
god  of  repose,  and  induced  in  them  that  most  enjoyable 
sensation,  a  feeling  of  entire  contentment  with  all  the 
world.     No   heat,  no   fret,  no   hurry,   no   great   call  to 


RALPH   WALDO  EMERSON.  137 

Strenuous  exertion  to  appear  well  or  make  a  fine  impres- 
sion. All  was  ease,  calm,  unstudied  attention  to  every 
little  want,  and  talk  fit  for  the  noblest  and  the  best.  He 
was  an  example  of  what  he  himself  honored  most. 

"  I  honor  that  man  whose  ambition  it  is,  not  to  win  laurels 
in  the  state  or  the  army,  not  to  be  a  jurist  or  a  naturalist,  not 
to  be  a  poet  or  a  commander,  but  to  be  a  master  of  living 
well,  and  to  administer  the  offices  of  master  or  servant,  of 
husband,  father,  and  friend." 

In  all  these  relations  Emerson  shone  resplendently, 
and  in  the  old-fashioned  relation  of  neighbor  he  was 
always  at  his  best.  To  the  family  of  his  old  friend  Alcott 
he  was  as  a  special  providence  for  many  years,  and  beau- 
tiful indeed  was  the  affection  in  which  he  was  held  by  them. 
When,  during  Emerson's  absence  in  Europe,  his  house 
was  partly  burned,  his  neighbors  promptly  rebuilt  it, 
ready  for  his  return.  Of  these  helpers  Emerson  wrote, 
in  accepting  their  gift :  — 

"Judge  Hoar  has  up  to  this  time  withheld  from  me  the 
names  of  my  benefactors  ;  but  you  may  be  sure  I  shall  not 
rest  till  I  have  learned  them,  every  one,  to  repeat  to  myself 
at  night  and  at  morning." 

Emerson's  personal  appearance  was  that  of  a  scholar 
and  the  descendant  of  scholars,  —  tall,  slender,  and  with 
the  complexion  which  is  bred  in  the  alcove  and  not  in 
the  open  air.  His  hair  was  brown,  fine,  and  thick.  His 
eyes  were  of  the  deepest  blue.  His  mode  of  living  was 
very  simple,  but  he  was  constitutionally  fastidious,  and 
very  much  averse  to  vulgar  or  commonplace  companion- 
ship. He  loved  all  children  and  simple-minded  people, 
and  the  very  babies  in  Concord  knew  and  loved  him. 
"  Incorrigible  spouting  Yankee  "  he  called  himself;  but 
he  was  rather  a  silent  man  in  reality,  and  did  not  care 
to  talk  excepting  when  he  had  somewhat  to  say.  He 
did  not  prate  eternally  of  silence,  as  Carlyle  did,  while 
wreaking  himself  upon  speech  in  the  most  frantically 
vehement  manner  all  his  days,  but  he  knew  when  and 


138  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

how  to  be  silent.  The  gUmpses  he  gives  of  Mrs.  Emerson, 
in  the  long  correspondence  with  Carlyle,  are  all  of  the 
most  pleasing  nature,  and  his  home  life  was  apparently 
as  perfect  as  music  all  his  life  long.  Of  the  boy  Waldo, 
who  died,  he  was  fond  of  speaking,  and  he  evidently 
mourned  him  very  deeply  for  a  long  time.  Of  his  other 
children  he  never  boasted,  but  always  spoke  most  kindly. 
The  most  entire  revelation  that  Emerson  ever  made  of 
himself  was  doubtless  in  the  letters  to  Carlyle ;  and  it 
must  be  said  that  nowhere  else  has  Carlyle  appeared  to  so 
good  advantage  as  in  this  correspondence  with  Emerson. 
One  loves  the  grim,  sardonic  old  man  better  after  seeing 
that  he  could  love  his  friend  faithfully  and  loyally  for 
so  many  years,  and  after  reading  all  the  tender  and  touch- 
ing things  he  puts  into  his  letters  to  him.  Especially  is 
this  the  case  in  the  later  days,  when  both  had  grown  to 
be  old  men,  and  had  been  saddened  by  their  life  expe- 
rience. Carlyle's  letters  after  his  wife's  death  are  very 
touching.     In  the  first  after  the  sad  event  he  says  :  — 

"  By  the  calamity  of  last  April  I  lost  my  little  all  in  this 
world,  and  have  no  soul  left  who  can  make  any  corner  of 
this  world  into  a  horne  for  me  any  more.  Bright,  heroic, 
tender,  true,  and  noble  was  that  lost  treasure  of  my  heart, 
who  faithfully  accompanied  me  in  all  the  rocky  ways  and 
climbings  ;  I  am  forever  poor  without  her.  She  was  snatched 
from  me  in  a  moment  as  by  a  death  from  the  gods.  Very 
beautiful  her  death  was;  radiantly  to  those  who  understood 
it,  had  all  her  life  been:  quid plura?''^ 

This  which  follows  in  the  same  letter,  written  while  Car- 
lyle was  still  in  the  unbroken  possession  of  his  faculties, 
makes  us  not  only  sad  but  indignant  that  his  determina- 
tion had  not  been  allowed  to  be  carried  out ;  and  that  the 
poor  old  man,  when  broken  down  by  age,  should  have 
been  permitted  to  expose  to  view  all  those  sacred  things 
which,  when  sane  and  sound,  he  would  so  carefully  have 
covered  from  the  prying  eyes  of  the  world.     He  says  :  — 

"  All  summer  last  my  one  solacement  in  the  form  of  work 
was  writing  and  sorting  of  old  documents  and  recollections  ; 


RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON.  139 

summoning  out  again  into  clearness  old  scenes  that  had 
now  closed  on  me  without  return.  Sad,  and  in  a  sense 
sacred  ;  it  was  like  a  kind  of  worship, —  the  only  devout  time 
I  had  had  for  a  great  while  past.  These  things  I  have  half 
or  wholly  the  intention  to  burn  out  of  the  way  before  I  my- 
self die  ;  but  such  continues  still  mainly  my  employment, 
to  me  if  to  no  other  useful.  To  reduce  matters  to  writing 
means  that  you  shall  know  them,  see  them  in  their  origins 
and  sequences,  in  their  essential  lineaments,  considerably 
better  than  you  ever  did  before.  To  set  about  writing  my 
own  life  would  be  no  less  than  horrible  to  me ;  and  shall 
of  a  certainty  never  be  done.  The  common,  impious,  vulgar 
of  this  earth  —  what  has  it  to  do  with  my  hfe  or  me?  Let 
dignified  obhvion,  silence,  and  the  vacant  azure  of  eternity 
swallow  me  ;  for  my  share  of  it,  that  verily  is  the  handsomest 
or  one  handsome  way  of  settling  my  poor  account  with  the 
canaille  of  mankind,  extant  and  to  come." 

How  would  his  sad  old  heart  have  been  torn  could 
he  have  foreseen  that  in  the  weakness  of  senihty  he 
would  expose  to  the  '  impious  vulgar '  all  the  most  sacred 
secrets  of  his  home  life  !  Oh,  the  pity  of  it !  As  a 
slight  offset  to  the  sad  revelations  thus  made,  let  us 
accept  this  little  note  in  Emerson's  diary  during  one  of 
his  visits  to  Chelsea :  —   •^ 

"  C.  and  his  wife  live  on  beautiful  terms.  Their  ways 
are  very  engaging,  and  in  her  bookcase  all  his  books  are 
inscribed  to  her  as  they  came,  year  by  year,  each  with  some 
significant  lines." 

Emerson's  regard  for  Mrs.  Carlyle  was  very  great,  and 
there  is  not  one  of  the  many  letters  but  sends  a  kindly 
and  a  warm  greeting  to  her  over  the  sea. 

For  the  rest,  this  correspondence  exhibits  Emerson  in 
the  hght  of  a  true  and  very  useful  friend  to  Carlyle,  — 
taking  infinite  trouble  in  the  early  days  to  introduce 
Carlyle's  books  in  America,  and  to  secure  to  the  author 
in  his  poverty  some  return  for  their  publication  here.  In 
this  he  was  successful,  and  sent  with  great  delight  little 
sums   of  money  to  his  friend.     The  books  met  with  a 


I40  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

quicker  recognition  in  America  than  in  England;  and 
after  Emerson  had  said  something  to  Carlyle  of  a  new 
edition  of  ''  Sartor  Resartus,"  Carlyle  writes  :  — 

"  As  for  Fraser,  however,  the  idea  of  a  new  edition  is 
frightful  to  him,  or  rather  ludicrous,  unimaginable.  Of 
him  no  man  has  inquired  for  a  '  Sartor.'  In  his  whole  won- 
derful world  of  Tory  pamphleteers,  Conservative  younger 
brothers,  Regent-street  lawyers,  Crockford  gamblers,  Irish 
Jesuits,  drunken  reporters,  and  miscellaneous  unclean  per- 
sons (whom  water  and  much  soap  will  not  make  clean),  not 
a  soul  has  expressed  the  smallest  wish  that  way.  He 
shrieks  at  the  idea." 

There  is  also  much  \vriting,  on  both  sides,  of  Carlyle 's 
coming  to  America.  For  years  this  was  the  most  enchant- 
ing topic,  of  which  they  never  grew  weary.  In  one  of 
his  saddest  moods,  while  yet  almost  unknown  and  very 
poor,  Carlyle  wrote  :  — 

"  In  joy,  in  grief,  a  voice  says  to  me,  *  Behold,  there  is  one 
that  loves  thee  ;  in  thy  loneliness,  in  thy  darkness,  see  how 
a  hospitable  candle  shines  from  far  over  seas,  how  a  friendly 
heart  watches  I '     It  is  very  good  and  precious  to  me." 

There  is,  of  course,  a  great  deal  of  mutual  admiration 
of  each  other's  work,  very  genuine,  ever  pleasant  to  hear 
about,  expressed  in  the  warmest  language,  —  even  in  those 
superlatives  wliich  Emerson  derided. 

There  are  also  lovely  bits  of  home  Ufe  upon  both  sides, 
— faultless  interiors  over  which  the  mind  will  linger  with 
delight  in  times  far  away  from  these,  when  the  students 
of  another  age  strive  to  make  to  themselves  a  picture  of 
what  sort  of  men  these  the  great  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury really  were.  There  is  nothing  told  in  these  volumes 
that  will  detract  from  the  fame  of  either,  but  much  that 
will  add  to  the  kindly  impression  which  they  have  made 
upon  their  time.  One  cannot  but  think,  as  the  letters 
grow  more  infrequent,  and  are  written  with  greater  labor, 
of  how  old  age  was  a  weariness  to  these  great  men  as  to 
others,  —  how  the  very  grasshopper  became  a  burden. 


RALPH   WALDO  EMERSON. 


141 


and  how  inexpressibly  sad  was  the  decay  of  their  great 
powers.  Emerson  begins  to  lag  first,  although  a  few 
years  younger  than  Carlyle,  and  Carlyle  implores  him, 
almost  piteously,  to  write.  There  is  an  interval  of  one, 
two,  and  even  three  years  in  the  correspondence  toward 
the  end ;  and  after  Emerson's  last  visit  to  England  they 
^vrote  no  more.  Carlyle 's  gentleness  and  tenderness  show 
themselves  very  beautifully  in  these  last  letters  to  his 
one  best  friend.  When  he  finds  that  it  has  become  hard 
for  Emerson  to  write,  he  begs  at  first  that  he  be  not 
forsaken,  but  after  a  little  says  in  effect :  Never  mind, 
my  friend,  if  it  wearies  you  to  write,  write  to  me  no 
more.  I  will  still  write  to  you,  and  thus  our  friendship 
shall  not  lack  for  a  voice.  When  the  sweet  bells  had 
become  a  litde  jangled  in  Emerson's  brain,  when  memory 
had  left  him  or  played  him  false,  and  there  was  a  weak- 
ening of  all  his  powers,  —  he  sat  still  in  his  own  home 
among  his  friends  and  kindred,  his  household  intact, 
and  surrounded  by  the  fondest  care  and  affection  ;  while 
his  old  friend  over  the  seas  —  the  broken  giant,  the  god 
of  thunder,  now  grown  silent  —  sat  in  utter  desolation  in 
the  home  he  had  reared  after  infinite  struggle  and  en- 
deavor, and  wrapped  in  a  soHtude  so  utter  and  so  black 
that  the  heart  which  can  look  upon  it  wthout  pity  must 
be  a  heart  of  stone.  Carlyle  died  on  the  5th  of  April, 
188 1,  being  eighty-five  years  old.  Emerson  died  on  the 
27th  of  April,  1882,  at  the  age  of  seventy-nine.  In 
death  they  were  not  long  divided. 


THOMAS    CARLYLE. 


CARLYLE  is  one  of  the  many  great  men  who  have 
suffered  severely  at  the  hands  of  their  biographers, 
and  from  the  pen  clan  in  general.  When  the  world  knew 
him  alone  or  chiefly  through  the  lurid  splendors  of  "  The 
French  Revolution," — that  book  which,  as  he  himself 
would  have  expressed  it,  was  a  truth,  though  a  truth  writ- 
ten in  hell-fire,  —  or  through  the  uncanny  labyrinths  of 
"  Sartor  Resartus,"  or  the  subtle  analysis  of  the  "  Hero- 
Worship,"  or  the  more  pleasing  pages  of  his  "  Burns,"  or 
"Milton,"  or  the  "Characteristics,"  it  would  stand  aloof 
in  wonder,  in  admiration,  almost  in  awe.  But  when  with 
his  own  hand  —  for  he  was  primarily  the  cause  of  all  —  he 
stripped  away  the  privacy  which  he  had  guarded  so  jeal- 
ously through  life,  and  through  the  "  Reminiscences  "  and 
his  wife's  letters,  which  he  prepared  for  publication,  took, 
as  we  may  say,  the  roof  off  from  the  house,  that  all  the 
world  might  look  in,  then  indeed  he  fell  from  his  lofty 
pedestal  and  became  like  one  of  us.  Hero-worship  was 
no  longer  possible,  but  loud  abuse  and  recrimination,  or 
apology  and  a  cry  for  charitable  construction,  became  the 
order  of  the  day.  We  may  say  that  he  had  only  himself 
to  thank  for  it ;  but  who  can  help  regretting  that  the  man 
in  his  old  age  should  so  have  destroyed  the  fair  fabric  of 
his  own  fame  ?  We  are  not  so  rich  in  heroes  that  we  can 
afford  to  lose  even  the  least  of  the  kingly  band  ;  and  we  have 
felt  that  we  have  sustained  an  irreparable  loss  ever  since  the 


THOMAS  CARLYLE.  1 43 

luckless  day  when  we  took  up  the  first  of  the  intensely  in- 
teresting but  most  painful  books  relating  to  this  great  life. 

Let  us  look  a  Httle  at  this  hero's  domestic  Hfe.  What 
was  its  foundation,  what  its  outcome?  That  there  was 
something  wrong  at  the  foundation  seems  to  be  clear. 
And  it  was  not  so  much  the  fact  that  neither  party  married 
the  first  choice  of  the  heart,  —  though  it  is  true  that  Jane 
Welsh  loved  with  all  the  ardor  of  her  nature  Edward 
Irving  first,  and  that  Carlyle  undoubtedly  would  have 
married  his  first  love,  the  fair  and  amiable  Margaret  Gor- 
don, the  original  of  Blumine  in  "  Sartor  Resartus,"  had 
not  poverty  prevented, —  but  rather  was  it  their  unsuitability 
to  each  other.  She  was  a  lady,  delicately  reared,  and  with 
a  taste  for  society  and  the  refinements  of  life  ;  with  a  love 
for  admiration,  too,  and  a  wish  to  shine  in  her  little  sphere. 
He  was  a  peasant,  coarsely  bred,  and  scorning  the  ameni- 
ties of  hfe  to  which  he  was  unaccustomed,  —  scorning,  too, 
the  chivalric  feeling  with  which  better  bred  men  look  upon 
women  and  treat  their  wives.  He  told  her  this,  bluntly 
and  brutally,  before  marriage.  They  two  were  to  be  one, 
and  he  that  one.  He  had  the  peasant  idea  of  being  mas- 
ter, and  to  the  end  of  his  days  held  fast  to  it.  They 
were  never,  to  his  mind,  equals,  but  he  was  the  chief  and 
she  the  subject.  This  w^as  what  put  her  down  intellectu- 
ally. In  her  youth  she  had  Hterary  tastes  and  ambitions, 
and  doubtless  much  abihty ;  but  after  marriage  we  hear  no 
more  of  that.  Even  in  the  seven  years  at  Craigenputtoch, 
when  one  would  think  that  out  of  sheer  weariness  and 
want  of  occupation  she  would  have  written  or  studied,  we 
hear  nothing  of  any  such  attempts.  Her  married  Hfe 
seems  to  have  quenched  all  this  utterly. 

Then  all  the  domestic  drudgery-,  which  to  her  seemed 
such  a  burden,  and  appears  to  have  afflicted  her  to 
the  end  of  Hfe,  seemed  to  him  to  be  the  natural  and 
proper  thing  for  a  woman.  He  had  all  his  hfe  been  ac- 
customed to  see  his  mother  and  sisters  at  their  tasks, 
naturally  and  uncomplainingly,  and  he  could  never  under- 
stand why  all  women  should  not  feel  in  the  same  way. 


144  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

Then  he  was  fond  of  soHtude,  and  looked  upon  a  visitor 
as  an  emissary  of  the  devil ;  and  he  failed  to  see  that  a  gay, 
pleasure-loving,  volatile,  sparkling  girl  could  not  share  his 
feelings.  So  he  shut  her  up  remorselessly,  —  never  dream- 
ing that  he  was  cruel.  That  she  was  fond  of  admiration 
was  nothing  to  him,  though  he  was  fond  of  it  himself  in 
his  own  grim  way;  he  was  the  central  figure  of  this 
household,  and  if  she  was  deprived  of  a  natural  enjoy- 
ment it  seemed  a  trifle  to  him.  In  short,  their  whole 
philosophy  of  life  was  different,  their  characters  unsuited 
to  each  other,  and  their  tempers  of  the  order  described 
as  "  difficult."  It  is  not  necessary  to  blame  one  or  the 
other  entirely  for  what  followed.  He  saw  everything  in 
one  light,  she  in  another ;  what  but  disappointment  and 
unrest  could  ensue? 

Had  she  clung  to  her  original  determination  not  to 
marry  him,  would  it  have  been  better?  Doubdess,  yet  it 
is  certain  that  she  learned  to  love  him,  even  too  much  for 
her  peace  of  mind  ;  and  it  is  foohsh  to  picture  her,  as  some 
have  done,  as  a  loveless  wife.  Probably  at  marriage  she 
was  not  what  is  usually  styled  "  in  love  "  with  him,  but 
that  she  did  love  him  through  life  is  not  to  be  doubted. 
And  that,  spite  of  all  his  neglect  and  harshness  and  sel- 
fishness, he  truly  loved  her  and  was  essentially  loyal  to  her 
is  as  little  to  be  doubted.  Whence  then  came  the  unhap- 
piness,  —  an  unhappiness  which,  we  think,  has  in  some 
places  been  greatly  exaggerated?  As  we  said  before, 
from  their  different  points  of  view.  Take,  for  instance, 
the  hardships  of  Craigenputtoch.  They  seemed  nothing 
to  him,  brought  up  as  he  had  been,  but  much  to  her,  who 
from  her  youth  had  been  the  petted  darhng  of  a  handsome 
home.  This  terrible  place,  which  has  been  described  as 
worse  than  a  desert  island,  was  a  large  and  recently  reno- 
vated old  manor-house  standing  in  fields  of  its  own,  only 
fifteen  miles  from  where  her  mother  lived,  and  twelve 
miles  from  Dumfries.  Everything  had  been  made  comfort- 
able for  them  by  her  mother,  and  in  the  farm-cottage  near 
were  his  brother  and  sister,  Jane  and  Alexander  Carlyle, 


THOMAS  CARLYLE.  1 45 

who  had  three  men  and  two  women ;  and  Mrs.  Carlyle 
herself  always  one  servant.  Much  has  been  written  of  her 
hardships  here,  —  and  they  were  very  real  hardships  to 
her ;  but  from  his  point  of  view  they  did  not  seem  so  bad. 
She  did  some  work,  but  one  cannot  help  thinking  that 
with  so  many  about  her,  if  she  habitually  did  such  drudg- 
ery as  is  represented,  it  was  her  own  fault.  There  will 
come  domestic  crises  in  all  households,  when  the  hands 
of  the  mistress  must  take  hold  to  save  from  chaos ;  but 
on  the  whole  it  would  seem  that  she  was  not  so  very  great 
a  martyr  in  this. 

The  lack  of  society  was  the  real  evil ;  and  this  Carlyle 
did  not  feel,  absorbed  as  he  was  in  his  mighty  work,  his 
brain  burning  with  the  great  thoughts  to  which  he  must 
give  utterance.  How  could  he  appreciate  the  vacuity  of 
her  life,  —  who  had  always  had  young  and  cheerful  com- 
pany about  her,  and  a  mother  to  pity  and  cheer  her  small- 
est sorrow  ?  It  was  very  pitiful  that  he  could  not  see,  but 
not  so  very  strange.  Many  another  man  would  have  been 
equally  obtuse. 

His  sisters  would  not  have  minded  it ;  he  did  not  mind 
it,  and  it  was  not  given  him  to  see  that  she  minded  it 
as  much  as  she  really  did.  For  it  is  certain  that  those 
seven  years  left  marks  upon  her  which  she  never  outgrew. 
They  almost  seem  to  have  changed  her  very  nature.  Yet 
Carlyle  with  his  peasant  nature  did  not  see  it,  but  \vrote 
cheerfully  upon  a  time,  "  Jane  is  far  heartier,  now  that  she 
has  got  to  work."  A  mistake,  says  Froude  :  "  Mrs.  Carlyle 
had  not  strength  for  household  work,  and  doing  it,  she 
permanendy  broke  down  her  health." 

And  again  Carlyle  writes,  with  a  little  more  appreciation 
of  the  situation  :  —  f 

'*  Her  life  beside  me,  constantly  writing  here,  is  but  a  dull 
one  ;  however,  she  seems  to  desire  no  other.  ...  I  tell  her 
many  times  there  is  much  for  her  to  do,  if  she  were  trained 
for  it,  — her  whole  sex  to  deliver  from  the  bondage  of  frivol- 
ity, dollhood,  and  imbecility,  into  the  freedom  of  valor  and 
womanhood." 

10 


146  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

Of  the  solitude  which  had  nearly  killed  his  wife,  he  after 
a  time  wearied  himself;  and  then  he  effected  a  change. 
One  laughs  to  think  of  the  second  moving,  and  wonders 
if  it  was  as  bad  as  the  first,  which  he  thus  described  :  — 

"  In  this  mansion  we  have  had  a  battle  like  that  of  Saint 
George  and  the  dragon.  Neither  are  we  yet  conquerors. 
Smoke,  and  wet,  and  chaos!  May  the  good  Lord  keep  all 
Christian  men  from  moving." 

If  it  seemed  as  bad  as  this  to  him,  what  did  it  seem  to 
her,  delicately  reared  and  hating  the  disagreeables  of  life  ? 
Still  she  did  not  complain,  but  wrote  to  his  mother  about 
this  time  :  "  I  could  wish  him  a  little  less  yellow,  and  a 
little  more  peaceable  ;  otherwise  he  is  perfect."  And  she 
soon  learned,  compelled  to  it  possibly  by  dire  necessity, 
to  take  upon  herself  all  of  the  practical  and  prosaic  part  of 
the  management  of  their  affairs. 

It  is  painful,  although  it  is  also  comical,  to  read  of  her 
domestic  battles  and  defeats.  She  put  infinite  wit  and 
talent  into  her  descriptions  of  them  in  her  letters  to  her 
friends,  and  the  whole  world  has  read  them  with  smiles 
and  tears  ;  but  they  were  not  light  troubles  to  her,  as  they 
w^ould  have  been  to  many  commonplace  women.  Proba- 
bly upon  a  majority  of  wives,  even  if  they  have  not  men 
of  genius  for  husbands,  fall  nearly  as  great  a  part  of  the 
domestic  duties  and  cares  as  upon  Mrs.  Carlyle ;  yet 
few  consider  this  a  great  hardship,  and  the  sympathies  of 
the  world  are  not  invoked  in  their  behalf.  It  was  not  this 
so  much  in  Mrs.  Carlyle's  case  as  it  was  the  moodiness 
and  fault-finding  and  general  irascibility  of  the  husband 
which  aggravated  everything,  and  made  little  things  seem 
great. 

That  her  spirits  were  entirely  gone  and  her  whole  viva- 
cious nature  changed  at  the  end  of  the  Craigenputtoch 
period  is  proved  by  sentences  from  her  letters.  To  his 
mother  she  writes  :  — 

"  It  is  my  husband's  worst  fault  with  me  that  I  will  not  or 
cannot  speak.     Often  when  he  has  talked  to  me  for  an  hour 


THOMAS  CARLYLE.  147 

without  answer,  he  will  beg  for  some  sign  of  life  on  my  part, 
and  all  that  I  can  give  him  is  a  little  kiss." 

And  she  was  a  woman  who  loved  to  talk,  and  he  the 
best  and  most  brilliant  talker  of  his  day.  Surely,  this  is 
pitiful.  But  after  they  went  up  to  London  this  aspect  of 
things  was  improved  for  her,  and  had  it  not  been  that 
thereafter  she  suffered  from  constant  ill-health  she  would 
doubtless  have  been  quite  comfortable.  But  her  health 
was  bad,  and  in  the  ignorance  of  the  day  the  dosing  was 
bad  ;  and  when  we  read  of  the  medicine  which  she  took  as 
she  took  her  daily  bread,  we  only  wonder  that  she  lived  to 
tell  the  tale.  It  speaks  a  great  deal  for  her  Scotch  consti- 
tution that  she  survived  her  remedies. 

Carlyle  was  soon  in  the  zenith  of  his  fame,  and  the  great 
men  of  the  day  sat  at  his  feet,  figuratively  speaking,  and 
would  Hterally  have  done  so  had  not  his  growl  been  so 
fierce  that  it  kept  them  at  bay.  Of  those  who  did  "  beard 
the  lion  in  his  den,  the  Douglas  in  his  hall,"  many  were 
immolated  in  his  diary ;  and  we  see  them,  now  that  it  has 
been  published,  like  so  many  flies  with  pins  stuck  through 
them,  fastened  to  the  paper.  Poor  Charles  Lamb  stands 
there,  bloodless,  fleshless ;  but  we  think  scarcely  the  less 
of  gentle  Elia  as  we  look  upon  him,  but  far  less  of  the 
cruel  perpetrator  of  the  atrocity.  Leigh  Hunt,  too,  has 
a  pin  quite  through  his  warm  heart;  and  Stuart  Mill, 
and  many  others.  One  wonders  sometimes  if  Froude 
himself  escaped,  or  if  he  were  there  too,  like  a  giant 
bluebottle,  desiccated  as  the  rest;  and  w^as  that  the 
reason  why  he  did  not  suppress  all  the  damaging  letters 
and  recollections,  but  maliciously  gave  them  to  the 
world  ? 

Mrs.  Carlyle's  pen  could  be  dipped  in  acid  also,  as  has 
been  proved  in  her  comments  upon  the  men  and  women 
of  her  time.  These,  to  be  sure,  are  very  brief  and  frag- 
mentary, and  it  has  been  a  source  of  much  wonder  that, 
knowing  intimately  as  she  did  many  of  the  notable  per- 
sons of  her  time,  she  has  not  left  behind  in  any  single 


148  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

letter  a  valuable  portrait  or  even  sketch  of  any  of  these 
great  people.  What  priceless  words  of  Darwin  she  might 
have  gathered  up,  which  all  the  world  would  have  eagerly 
read  ;  what  characteristic  anecdotes  she  could  have  told  of 
Tennyson,  —  what  an  insight  she  might  have  given  into 
the  man  behind  the  poet ;  what  noble  things  she  must 
have  known  of  Stuart  Mill ;  what  inimitable  facetice  con- 
cerning the  Hunts ;  what  spirited  stories  she  could  have 
told  of  Jeffrey ;  what  a  light  she  could  have  cast  over 
dark  places  in  the  life  of  Edward  Irving  !  Why  did  she 
not  do  this,  we  wonder.  Did  the  dread  of  assassination 
hover  over  her?  For  Charles  Buller,  Carlyle's  friend,  had 
just  made  his  plea  for  the  man  who  killed  his  wife  for 
keeping  a  diary  :  "  What  else  could  a  poor  fellow  do  with 
a  wife  who  kept  a  diary,  but  murder  her?  " 

We  cannot  but  regret  that  the  sketches  were  not  writ- 
ten. They  would  have  been  immortal ;  for  her  power  in 
this  line  has  been  unequalled  by  any  one  who  has  written 
in  these  later  days.  As  it  is,  she  has,  unconsciously  to 
herself,  left  a  picture  of  the  greatest  of  all  the  men  she 
knew —  Carlyle  himself  —  which  can  never  be  blotted  out. 
The  portrait  is  full-length,  full  of  Rembrandt-like  light  and 
shadow,  and  remorselessly  faithful  Painted  not  for  the 
pubhc  eye,  but  sketched  in  a  thousand  little  parts,  in  mat- 
ter-of-fact every -day  letters  to  humble  friends,  with  no 
remotest  thought  that  other  eyes  would  ever  see  them,  — 
it  is  this  by  which  Carlyle  as  a  man  will  be  known  to  all 
coming  time.  Not  a  hero,  not  a  monster,  as  some  have 
claimed,  but  a  faulty  man,  with  the  defects  of  his  qualities, 
described  by  a  woman  faulty  like  himself.  A  constitu- 
tional growler,  with  a  warm  heart  withal,  and  infinite  ca- 
pacities for  tenderness ;  selfish  it  may  be,  but  inexorably 
just ;  cold  to  all  the  outside  world,  but  warm-hearted  and 
generous  and  magnificently  loyal  to  his  family,  throughout 
all  his  distinguished  career.  No  trace  of  snobbery  or  false 
shame  in  him.  Not  liking  the  reformers  of  his  own  day, 
but  almost  deifying  the  reformers  of  the  past,  and  him- 
self making  it  his  mission,  from  earliest  youth  to  hoary  age, 


THOMAS  CARLYLE. 


149 


to  reform  the  world  in  his  own  particular  Carlylean  way ; 
fiercely  assailing  much  that  passed  for  religion,  but  being 
always  deeply  and  truly  religious  at  heart.  What  a  vast 
contradictory  Titan  he  seems  in  it  all !  If  a  lovely  wind- 
flower,  fresh  and  fragrant  as  the  breath  of  morning,  was 
crushed  in  the  arms  of  this  god  of  thunder,  what  shall  we 
say  ?  Shall  we  reject  the  god  of  thunder,  who  gave  us  the 
"  Heroes,"  and  the  ''  Cromwell,"  and  the  "  Frederick," 
and  wish  that  he  might  have  been  a  gentle  poet  singing 
to  a  lute ;  or  shall  we  thank  God  for  him,  even  as  he  was, 
though  we  give  a  tear  to  the  wind-flower  ? 


VICTOR   HUGO. 

THE  times  of  Napoleon  and  the  First  Empire  seem 
to  be  more  than  a  Hfetime  away  from  us ;  and  yet 
it  was  in  that  day  that  Victor  Hugo  Hved  as  a  child  in 
the  old  convent  of  the  Feuillantines  so  graphically  de- 
scribed in  "Les  Mis^rables."      Here   he   and   his   two 
brothers  lived  with  their  mother  in  the  strictest  seclusion, 
while  the  father,  General  Hugo,  a  soldier  of  the  Empire, 
was  off  with  the  Grand  Army  at  some  distant  point,  either 
in  garrison  or  in  the  field.   The  child,  who  was  afterwards  to 
hold  Napoleon  the  Litde  up  to  the  execration  of  the  world, 
felt  his  earliest  emotions  of  patriotism  stirred  by  the  glori- 
ous conquests  of  Napoleon  the  Great.    General  Hugo  was 
one  of  the  most  gallant  soldiers  of  the  day,  and  placed  in 
many  positions  of  trust  and  of  responsibility,  as  well  as  of 
danger,  by  Napoleon.     He  it  was  who  conducted  the 
terrible  retreat  from  Spain  just  before  the  fall  of  Napo- 
leon.    His  soldiers  were  the  only  protection  to  the  lives 
of  twenty  thousand  French  fugitives,  who  were  fleeing 
from  Madrid  wild  with  terror ;  for  the  pursuing  Spaniards 
would  not  have  hesitated  to  massacre  the  helpless  multi- 
tude, had  they  found  it  in  their  power  to  do  so.     From 
every  bush  projected  the  muzzle  of  a  gun,  charged  with 
the  death  of  an  invader;  every  pass  concealed  an  am- 
bush ;  every  height  bristled  with  guns  in  the  hands  of  the 
patriots.      But   General   Hugo   conducted   the  fugitives 


VICTOR  HUGO.  151 

through  in  safety,  and  proceeded  to  take  command  of 
the  fortress  at  Thionville,  soon  to  be  besieged. 

He  defended  this  outpost  of  the  Empire  with  great 
gallantry,  and  it  was  the  last  citadel  over  which  the  tri- 
color waved.     But  at  last  General  Hugo  was  forced  to 
surrender  it  to  the  Allies,  and  the  star  of  Napoleon  had 
set  forever.     Madame  Hugo  had  been  a  royalist  always, 
although  she  had  not  been  allowed  to  influence  the  minds 
of  the  children  in  that  direction ;  but  after  the  fall  of  the 
Emperor  she  openly  proclaimed  her  sympathy  with  the 
Bourbons,  and  was  so  demonstrative  in  her  enthusiasm 
that  it  led  to  a  complete  estrangement  between  herself 
and  her  husband.    Victor  as  a  boy  sided  with  his  mother, 
and  was  royalist  to  the  core ;  but  as  soon  as  he  became  a 
man  he  gravitated  at  once  to  his  father's  side.    The  years 
which  he  passed  with  his  mother  and  brothers,  and  the 
priest  who   was  their  tutor,  in   the   old   garden   of  the 
Feuillantines,  were  as  peaceful  and  happy  as  the  years  of 
childhood  should  always  be.     It  was  in  an  almost  de- 
serted quarter  of  Paris,  and  the  grounds  were  spacious, 
being  the  remains  of  a  park  once  attached  to  the  convent. 
They  were,  however,  neglected ;  and  everything  had  run 
wild  here,  until  it  seemed  to  the  city  children  almost  like 
a  forest.     A  ruined  chapel  was  in  this  wood,  which  always 
excited  the  imagination  of  the  boys,  who  were  thoughtful 
and  fanciful  beyond  their  years.    Beautiful  horse-chestnut 
trees  cast  their  shadows  round  this  ruin,  and  were  the 
home  of  innumerable  birds  who  nested  there.     Upon  the 
walls  among  the  cankered  and  unnailed   espaliers  were 
niches  for  Madonnas  and  fragments  of  crucifixes ;   and 
vines   hung   there   in   ragged   festoons   to   the    ground. 
Through  these  dismantled  cloisters  and  spacious  abbey- 
chambers  the  imagination  of  the  boys  ran  riot,  and  it  cast 
a  sort  of  poetic  glamour  over  their  young  and  sohtary 
lives. 

To  this  secluded  place  came,  at-  one  period  of  Victor's 
childhood.  General  Lahorie,  his  godfather,  hiding  from 
the  authorities,  who  had  set  a  price  upon  his  head  ;  and  here 


152 


HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 


he  was  securely  hidden  by  Madame  Hugo  for  two  years, 
as  Victor  Hugo  afterwards  pictured  Jean  Valjean  as  being 
concealed  there  by  the  old  gardener.  Lahorie  was  im- 
plicated in  Moreau's  plot  against  Napoleon,  and  was  be- 
ing diligently  sought  after  by  the  police  all  the  time  he 
occupied  the  ruined  chapel  in  the  old  convent-garden. 
His  camp  bed  was  under  the  shelter  of  the  altar;  in  a 
corner  were  his  pistols ;  and  although  the  rain  and  snow 
came  in  through  the  dilapidated  windows,  he  bivouacked 
here  in  winter  as  well  as  summer.  The  children  never 
knew  who  he  was;  he  was  called  simply  "the  General," 
and  was  much  loved  by  the  boys,  to  whom  he  talked 
much  of  their  country  and  of  liberty.  After  a  time,  under 
the  promise  of  pardon  if  he  came  forward  to  receive  it, 
he  was  betrayed  into  giving  himself  up ;  was  arrested  at 
once,  cast  into  prison,  and  afterward  shot,  —  one  of 
the  most  infamous  of  the  acts  of  Napoleon,  noted 
throughout  his  whole  cai'eer  for  treachery  and  insatiable 
bloodthirstiness. 

This  devilish  betrayal  of  his  early  friend  did  not  fail  to 
impress  the  mind  of  such  a  boy  as  Victor  Hugo,  and  to 
add  to  his  natural  hatred  of  tyi-ants  and  their  deeds.  It 
was  perhaps  the  most  lasting  and  impressive  lesson  that 
he  ever  learned,  and  the  world  has  seen  its  results  in  his 
life.  Throughout  all  the  varied  years  of  a  long  and  event- 
ful career,  it  was  ever  at  the  shrine  of  liberty  that  he  paid 
his  devotions,  ever  her  praises  that  he  sung  in  his  loftiest 
verse,  ever  for  her  that  he  struck  the  strongest  blows  of 
which  his  arm  was  capable. 

Almost  solitary  as  were  the  lives  of  the  children  under 
Madame  Hugo's  watchful  eyes,  the  one  visitor  who  was 
admitted  to  their  companionship  was  welcomed  with  more 
than  the  accustomed  warmth  of  children.  This  was  a  lit- 
tle girl  named  Adele  Foucher  (about  thirteen  or  fourteen 
years  old  when  she  first  visited  them),  who  used  occasion- 
ally to  spend  the  day  with  the  boys  in  the  garden.  Victor 
soon  felt  for  her  the  most  tender  and  chivalric  regard. 
He  has  himself  described  it  once  and  again,  the  first  time 


VICTOR   HUGO.  1^3 

in  the  story  of  Pepita,  in  "  Le  Dernier  Jour  d  'un  Con- 
damn6,"  where  "  he  sees  her  in  all  her  charms,  just 
fourteen  years  of  age,  with  large  lustrous  eyes  and  luxuri- 
ant hair,  with  rich  golden-brown  skin  and  crimson  lips ; 
he  dwells  on  the  proud  emotion  which  he  felt  as  she 
leaned  upon  his  arm ;  he  recounts  how  they  wandered, 
talking  softly,  along  the  shaded  walks ;  he  tells  how  he 
picked  up  for  her  the  handkerchief  she  had  dropped,  and 
was  conscious  of  her  hands  trembling  as  they  touched  his 
own.  And  he  recollects  how  they  talked  about  the  birds, 
the  stars,  and  the  golden  sunset,  —  sometimes,  too,  about 
her  school-fellows,  her  dresses,  and  her  ribbons ;  they 
blushed  together  over  the  most  innocent  of  thoughts." 
Again,  in  "  Les  Mis^rables,"  Victor  Hugo  reverts  to  the 
scenes  of  his  youth,  and  to  his  child-love. 

"  Marius  "  is  but  a  free  variation  of  himself;  the  circum- 
stances are  changed,  but  the  character  is  the  same,  and 
the  garden  scenes  between  Marius  and  Cosette  are  but 
faint  reproductions  of  passages  in  the  courtship  of  the 
poet  and  Mile.  Foucher.  Victor  had  begim  to  write 
poetry  by  this  time,  and  some  of  his  earlier  efforts  had 
attracted  considerable  attention.  His  whole  ambition  lay 
in  this  direction.     We  are  told  by  his  biographer  that  — 

"his  greatest  pleasure  was  to  accompany  his  mother  to 
M.  Foucher's  house,  and  there  spend  long  evenings  in  un- 
spoken admiration  of  the  maiden  to  whom  his  whole  heart 
was  devoted.  It  was  not  long  before  these  admiring  glances 
were  nodced  by  the  parents,  to  whom  the  danger  of  encour- 
aging such  a  passion  was  apparent,  as  both  the  young  people 
were  of  an  age  when  marriag^e  was  out  of  the  question.  By 
mutual  consent  the  two  families  broke  off  their  intimacy  for 
a  time.  Victor  Hugo  found  expression  for  his  grief  at  the 
separation,  in  a  poem  that  is  full  of  sad  and  gentle  dig- 
nity. ...  In  spite  of  apparent  resignation,  the  obstacles 
placed  in  the  way  of  his  passion  only  increased  its  intensity, 
and  absence,  instead  of  extinguishing  his  love,  served  only  to 
increase  it.  His  fevered  imagination  devised  a  thousand 
means  by  which  he  might  catch  a  glimpse  of  one  without 
whom  he  felt  it  impossible  to  exist.     Numberless  are  the 


154  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

stratagems  he  contrived,  and  incredible  the  ingenuity  with 
which  they  were  executed  ;  the  freshness  of  his  romance 
was  itself  an  exquisite  idyl.  .  .  .  Victor  never  despaired ; 
but  in  the  midst  of  his  anticipations  he  was  overwhelmed  by 
a  terrible  blow." 

Madame  Hugo  died  very  suddenly  in  the  summer  of 
182 1,  and  the  grief  of  her  son  was  deep  and  lasting.  He 
could  no  longer  remain  away  from  the  one  being  he  felt 
could  afford  him  comfort,  and  he  went  boldly  to  the  house 
of  M.  Foucher  and  declared  his  love  for  Mile.  Adele, 
asking  of  her  parents  her  hand  in  marriage.  Although 
both  wTre  so  young,  and  they  had  as  yet  no  means  of 
living,  the  parents  did  not  deny  the  suit,  only  stipulating 
that  there  should  be  no  present  thought  of  marriage. 
Victor  was  very  poor  at  this  time,  his  allowance  from  his 
father  having  been  withdrawn,  and  he  having  no  settled 
employment;  so  the  lovers  were  unwilhngly  forced  to 
accept  these  terms.  They  were  very  happy  at  this  time, 
despite  his  privations,  which  were  very  real,  and  hard  for 
one  brought  up  in  comfort,  as  he  had  been,  to  endure. 
For  a  whole  year  he  lived  on  seven  hundred  francs,  which 
he  earned  by  his  pen,  cooking  his  own  meals  in  his 
humble  lodgings,  and  finding  them  sometimes  scanty  and 
unsatisfactory.  He  tells  us  he  had  but  three  shirts  at  this 
time,  and  sometimes  found  it  difficult  to  be  as  neat  as  he 
desired.  It  was  not  long,  however,  before  the  verses  of 
the  young  poet  attracted  the  attention  of  the  king,  w^ho 
bestowed  a  pension  upon  him  of  one  thousand  francs, 
from  his  private  purse.  This  enabled  the  poet  to  consum- 
mate his  marriage  with  Mile.  Foucher,  w^hich  was  done  in 
October,  1822.  The  bridegroom,  whose  fortune  consisted 
of  eight  hundred  francs,  presented  his  bride  with  a  wed- 
ding dress  of  French  cashmere.  The  brightness  of  the 
occasion  was  destroyed  by  a  sudden  attack  of  insanity 
which  overtook  Victor's  brother  Eugene,  —  an  attack  from 
which  he  never  recovered.  Victor  now  began  in  earnest 
his  literary  work,  and  soon  published  his  first  novel,  "  Han 
d'lslande,"  which  is  said  to  bear  a  marked  resemblance  to 


VICTOR  HUGO.  irr 

the  works  of  Walter  Scott.  He  soon  followed  this  with 
his  plays,  "  Marion  Delorme  "  and  '*  Hernani,"  the  former 
of  which  was  soon  prohibited  by  the  Government. 

The  first  representation  of  "  Hernani "  was  an  event 
long  remembered  in  Paris.  It  was  supposed  that  the 
classical  school  would  receive  the  new  drama  with  little 
favor,  and  would  perhaps  drive  it  from  the  stage ;  so  the 
friends  of  the  new  movement  in  literature  determined 
to  organize  for  its  defence ;  and  as  Victor  Hugo  had  de- 
cided against  having  the  usual  paid  daquers,  they  deter- 
mined to  form  themselves  into  such  a  body  and  carry 
the  play  through  at  all  hazards.  Fired  with  zeal,  all  the 
young  litterateurs  of  the  day  organized  in  companies,  each 
under  a  captain  of  its  own,  and  at  an  early  hour  in  the 
afternoon  of  the  day  set  for  the  performance,  appeared 
before  the  theatre.  Among  those  selected  as  captains 
was  Theophile  Gautier,  then  but  nineteen  years  old.  He 
determined  to  appear  in  a  dress  worthy  of  the  occasion, 
and  demanded  such  a  costume  of  his  tailor  as  that  worthy 
man  had  never  before  prepared  for  a  human  being,  —  not 
even  a  poet.  The  waistcoat  was  of  scarlet  satin,  and, 
according  to  Gautier's  directions,  it  was  made  to  open 
behind.  The  trousers  were  of  a  pale-green  tint,  with  a 
stripe  of  black  velvet  down  the  seams,  a  black  coat  with 
broad  velvet  facings,  and  a  voluminous  gray  overcoat 
turned  up  with  green  satin.  A  piece  of  watered  ribbon 
did  duty  both  for  collar  and  neck-tie.  With  his  long  hair 
streaming  down  his  back,  and  in  this  remarkable  cos- 
tume, Gautier  must  certainly  have  presented  a  picturesque 
appearance.  Many  other  of  the  "  Hernani  "  partisans 
appeared  in  costumes  quite  as  eccentric.  The  passers- 
by  stopped  and  stared  at  them  in  astonishment.  Some 
of  them  wore  soft  felt  hats,  some  appeared  in  coats  of 
velvet  or  satin,  frogged,  broidered,  or  trimmed  with  fur ; 
others  were  enveloped  in  Spanish  cloaks,  and  the  array 
of  caps  was  quite  miraculous.  Most  of  them  wore  pro- 
digious beards  and  long  hair,  at  a  time  when  every  well- 
regulated  citizen  was  closely  cropped  and  shaven.     They 


156 


HOME  LIFE   OF  GREA  T  A  UTHORS. 


waited  more  than  six  hours  in  the  street,  and  the  moment 
the  doors  were  opened  rushed  in  and  took  possession  of 
the  theatre.  They  had  brought  their  lunches ;  and  eggs, 
sausages,  and  bottles  of  wine  were  consumed  in  the  seats 
of  the  theatre  where  the  fine  ladies  usually  sat.  The 
evening  was  tumultuous  in  the  extreme  ;  but  whenever  the 
classics  hissed,  the  disciples  of  Romanticism  not  only 
cheered,  but  rose  to  their  feet  and  howled.  When  the 
groans  of  the  Philistines  became  unbearable,  the  enthusi- 
asts of  the  pit  would  drown  them  by  shouting  "  To  the 
guillotine  with  the  sycophants."  But  though  the  evening 
was  a  continual  uproar,  no  doubt  was  entertained  at  its 
close  that  the  victory  was  with  the  Romanticists ;  and  at 
the  conclusion  of  the  performance  the  name  of  the  author 
was  proclaimed  as  that  of  a  victorious  general,  and  the 
shouts  of  acclamation  overwhelmed  the  storm  of  hisses. 
Victor  Hugo  was  the  great  star  of  the  French  capital 
from  that  day. 

Meanwhile,  all  was  happiness  in  the  poet's  household. 
The  wife  of  his  youthful  dreams  presided  with  tact  and 
grace  over  his  home,  and  her  dark  Spanish  beauty  was 
much  admired  by  the  crowds  of  youthful  friends  who  now 
began  to  frequent  the  house.  This  type  of  beauty  ap- 
pears almost  as  constantly  in  Victor  Hugo's  books  as  the 
head  of  La  Fornarina  did  in  the  pictures  of  Raphael.  He 
seems  constantly  to  seek  to  immortalize  her  whom  he  had 
chosen  for  his  own.  Madame  Hugo's  picture  was  painted 
for  the  Salon  by  their  friend  M.  Louis  Boulanger,  and 
was  thus  described  at  the  time  :  — 

"  A  full,  well-developed  bust,  white  arms  of  perfect  form  ; 
a  pair  of  plump,  delicate  hands  that  a  queen  might  envy ; 
the  hips  high,  and  setting  off  a  figure  that  was  faultless  in  its 
contour  and  flexibility." 

She  performed  her  duties  as  hostess  with  infinite  grace, 
and  her  salon  was  filled  with  celebrities  like  Lamartine, 
who  would  write  verses  in  her  album,  and  with  women 
like  Madame  de  Girardin.     The  house  was  always  filled 


VICTOR  HUGO.  I^y 

with  visitors,  attracted  by  the  fascinatit)ns  of  the  hostess 
as  much  as  by  the  joyousness  of  the  poet.  As  Victor 
Hugo's  fame  increased,  we  are  told  that  — 

"the  calm  serenity  of  his  early  years  of  married  life  was 
somewhat  disturbed  by  the  cares  and  anxieties  that  glory 
brings  ;  but  at  the  time  of  his  residence  in  the  Place  Royale, 
of  which  we  have  been  speaking,  there  was  great  happiness 
in  the  household,  with  the  young  and  beaudml  children." 

The  beautiful  Madame  Drouet,  then  an  actress  upon  the 
Parisian  stage,  was  said  to  have  come  between  the  poet 
and  his  wife  at  a  later  day ;  and  it  is  certain  that  she 
shared  his  banishment,  assisting  him  much  in  his  Hterary 
labor,  and  finally,  after  the  death  of  the  poet's  wife,  came 
to  preside  over  his  home  in  the  last  days,  cherishing  her 
love  for  him  to  the  very  close  of  his  life.  She  is  said  to 
have  been  very  beautiful,  even  in  old  age,  when  her  hair, 
Alphonse  Daudet  tells  us,  was  as  white  as  swan's-down. 

It  is  not  our  purpose  to  deal  with  the  public  Hfe  of 
Victor  Hugo,  and  we  pass  over  all  that  occurred  up  to 
the  time  of  the  exile,  after  the  coup  d'etat  of  Louis 
Napoleon.     The  historian  tells  us  that  — 

"  Victor  Hugo  had  asked  the  Assembly  whether,  hav- 
ing had  a  Napoleon  the  Great,  they  were  now  to  have 
a  Napoleon  the  Little ;  he  had  inquired  of  the  Royalists 
how  it  was  that  they  entered  into  such  strange  fellow- 
ship with  the  Empire,  pointing  out  significantly  how  the 
Imperialists  who  had  murdered  the  Due  D'Enghien,  and 
the  Legitimatists  who  had  shot  Murat,  were  now  grasping 
each  other's  blood-stained  hands.  From  the  tribune  he 
had  proclaimed  that  the  Republic  is  invincible,  and  that  in 
France  it  would  prove  itself  indestructible,  as  being  identical 
on  the  one  hand  with  the  age,  on  the  other  with  the  people. 
In  lofty  language,  alike  prophetic  of  the  future  and  condem- 
natory of  the  present,  he  had  poured  out  his  indignation  in 
the  ears  of  the  nation.  The  result  of  all  this  was  that 
Bonaparte  wrote  his  name  at  the  head  of  the  Hst  of  the 
proscribed." 


158  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

Feeling  that  if  lie  remained  in  Paris  his  life  would  be 
sacrificed  to  no  purpose,  he  endeavored  to  get  away  from 
the  city.  This  was  no  easy  matter  to  accomplish,  and 
had  it  not  been  for  the  active  and  skilful  assistance  of 
Madame  Drouet,  he  would  doubtless  have  been  impris- 
oned, with  his  many  friends,  who  crowded  all  the  jails  of 
Paris.  A  price  was  set  upon  his  head ;  twenty-five  thou- 
sand francs  was  offered  to  any  one  who  would  either  kill 
or  arrest  him,  and  there  were  many  assassins  lurking 
about  in  waiting  for  him.  Madame  Drouet  took  him  in 
a  fiacre,  and  secretly  started  out  to  seek  for  him  a  refuge. 
She  thought  she  had  friends  who  would  shelter  him,  as 
Madame  Hugo  had  sheltered  Lahorie  during  the  troub- 
lous times  of  the  first  Empire.  She  applied  to  friend 
after  friend  in  vain.  She  wept,  she  implored,  she  tried 
to  bribe,  —  in  vain.  The  citizens  were  too  much  intimi- 
dated to  dare  shelter  one  of  the  proscribed,  —  even 
Victor  Hugo,  perhaps  the  most  honored  man  in  the 
nation.  Madame  Drouet,  however,  would  not  yield  to 
despair,  but  pursued  her  way  with  undaunted  determina- 
tion. The  drive  was  terrible,  —  past  ruined  barricades 
and  pointed  cannon,  through  bloody  patrols,  and  among 
the  police  so  thoroughly  accustomed  to  the  hunting  of 
men.  They  passed  more  than  one  Javert  in  that  fearful 
ride ;  and  when  Victor  Hugo  afterwards  described  the 
sensations  of  a  man  pursued  like  Jean  Valjean,  he  did 
not  have  to  draw  very  strongly  upon  his  imagination. 
The  horrible  feeling  of  doubt  and  distrust,  and  the  cold 
thrills  of  dread  at  every  change  of  circumstance,  were 
well  known  to  his  own  soul.  Madame  Drouet's  perse- 
verance was  at  last  rewarded  by  finding  a  temporary 
retreat  for  her  charge  under  the  roof  of  a  distant  rela- 
tive of  the  poet,  where  he  remained  five  days,  filled  with 
the  most  harrowing  anxiety  for  the  friends  whom  he  was 
endangering,  as  well  as  for  himself.  His  two  sons  were 
already  in  prison,  and  fears  for  their  safety  were  added 
to  his  other  burdens.  But  he  escaped  at  last,  in  disguise, 
and  fled  to  Brussels,  now  filled  with  French  exiles.     He 


VICTOR  HUGO.  159 

managed  to  communicate  with  his  wife,  but  his  sons  in 
their  prison-cells  could  only  conjecture  as  to  his  fate. 
But  they  heard  the  roar  of  cannon  and  the  rattle  of 
musketry  outside  the  walls,  and  knew  that  the  prison 
was  overflowing  with  victims ;  and  they  feared  the  worst. 
Madame  Hugo  soon  joined  her  husband  in  Brussels, 
and  he  immediately  set  to  work  to  write  "  L'Histoire 
d'un  Crime,"  and  completed  it  in  five  months.  With  the 
power  of  a  Tacitus  he  describes  the  scenes  of  the  great 
historical  drama  he  has  taken  part  in,  and  with  the  pen 
of  a  Juvenal  lashes  the  betrayers  of  the  Republic.  The 
book  was  not  published  till  1S77,  but  it  will  tell  the  story 
of  a  shameful  epoch  in  French  history  to  the  remotest 
time.  He  was  not  allowed  to  enjoy  his  refuge  in  Brussels 
long ;  almost  as  soon  as  he  had  printed  his  "  Napoleon 
the  Little,"  which  book  he  wTote  after  completing  the 
"  History  of  a  Crime,"  he  was  requested  by  the  Belgian 
government  to  leave  the  country. 

He  repaired  to  the  Island  of  Jersey,  where  he  was 
joined  by  his  sons  upon  their  release,  and  by  quite  a 
party  of  friends.  He  took  a  small  house  known  as 
Marine  Terrace,  on  the  sea-shore,  and  there  set  up  his 
household  gods  once  more.  The  house  was  only  one 
story  high,  but  it  had  a  balcony,  a  terrace,  and  a  gar- 
den ;  and  it  overlooked  the  sea,  which  seemed  more 
than  all  to  Victor  Hugo.  His  income  was  now  but 
seven  thousand  francs,  and  he  had  nine  persons  to 
provide  for.  No  more  money  could  be  expected 
from  France,  and  probably  no  more  from  literature,  at 
present.  But  his  busy  pen  kept  at  its  work,  trusting  to 
the  future ;  and  the  time  passed  not  altogether  unpleas- 
andy  to  the  little  body  of  exiles.  Jersey  is  of  itself 
delightful,  and  the  poet  found  great  pleasure  in  its 
climate,  its  scenery,  and  its  luxuriant  vegetation.  But 
Napoleon  did  not  at  all  enjoy  the  proximity  of  his  great 
enemy,  and  soon  took  measures  to  drive  him  from  his 
retreat.  Hearing  of  the  new  move  against  him,  Victor 
Hugo  took  occasion  to  defy   Napoleon,  and  to  "warn 


l6o  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

him  that  whether  it  be  from  France,  from  Belgium,  from 
England,  or  from  America,  my  voice  shall  never  cease 
to  declare  that  sooner  or  later  he  will  have  to  expiate 
the  crime  of  the  2d  of  December.  What  is  said  is  true  : 
there  is  a  personal  quarrel  between  him  and  me ;  there 
is  the  old  quarrel  of  the  judge  upon  the  bench  and  the 
prisoner  at  the  bar."  They  were  ordered  to  quit  the 
Island  of  Jersey,  and  were  treated  to  some  scenes  of 
violence  before  departing,  which  they  did  with  consider- 
able regret,  having  found  life  in  that  favored  region  com- 
fortable, if  not  inspiring.  They  received  a  warm  welcome 
at  Guernsey,  whither  they  retreated,  and  soon  made  a 
new  home  on  that  hospitable  shore.  A  large  and  con- 
venient residence,  known  as  Hauteville  House,  situated 
on  the  top  of  a  cliff,  was  rented  and  repaired,  and  served 
as  a  home  for  the  poet  and  his  friends  during  all  the 
remaining  years  of  his  exile,  which  were  destined  to  be 
many.  Victor  Hugo  changed  and  beautified  the  house 
according  to  his  own  ideas,  doing  much  of  the  work  with 
his  own  hands ;  and  the  result  is  something  eminently 
characteristic  of  the  man. 

On  the  third  story  is  the  study,  a  kind  of  belvedere, 
with  its  sides  and  roof  composed  of  glass.  In  this  study, 
which  overlooked  the  httle  town  of  St.  Sampson  and  its 
picturesque  promontory,  the  poet  did  his  work.  Here 
he  finished  "  Les  Miserables,"  which  had  been  begun 
in  the  Place  Royale ;  here  was  produced  the  magnificent 
essay  on  Shakspeare ;  and  here  he  worked  almost  liter- 
ally from  morning  until  night.  The  house  became  a 
refuge  for  exiles  from  many  lands,  and  a  chamber,  still 
known  as  "  Garibaldi's  room,"  was  fitted  up  expressly  for 
that  hero,  under  the  expectation  that  he  would  accept 
the  invitation  of  Victor  Hugo  to  share  his  home,  at  a 
time  when  his  fortunes  were  at  their  lowest  ebb.  Many 
literary  men  were  here  at  different  times,  generously  cared 
for  by  the  host,  who  called  the  retreat  "the  raft  of 
Medusa."  There  were  many  pets  also,  especially  dogs, 
as  Victor  Hugo  almost  shared  the  sentiment  of  Madame 


VICTOR  HUGO.  l6i 

de  Stael  concerning  these  animals,  "  The  more  I  know 
men,  the  better  I  love  dogs." 

The  wonderful  success  of  "  Les  Miserables,"  when  it 
was  published  in  1862,  called  the  attention  of  the  whole 
world  to  the  illustrious  exile  on  the  sea-girt  isle,  and  after 
that  time  he  was  overwhelmed  with  visitors  from  all  parts 
of  the  earth,  anxious  to  see  one  who  had  come  to  be 
looked  upon  as  the  greatest  man  of  his  time.  The  suc- 
cess of  the  book  was  unprecedented,  the  sales  were  enor- 
mous, and  the  enthusiasm  of  readers  and  critics  almost 
without  a  parallel. 

Madame  Hugo  died  in  1868,  and  it  was  always  a  great 
grief  to  her  husband  that  she  could  not  have  lived  to 
share  his  return  to  his  native  land,  which  took  place 
after  the  downfall  of  Louis  Napoleon  in  1870.  After 
nineteen  years  of  exile,  he  returned  to  his  country 
only  to  find  it  in  the  hands  of  the  Prussians  first,  and 
of  the  Commune  afterward.  One  of  his  companions  on 
that  eventful  journey  thus  describes  the  feehngs  of  the 
returned  exile  :  — 

"  Making  good  their  retreat  from  Mezieres,  on  their 
way  to  Paris,  the  remnant  of  Vinoy's  corps,  poor,  harassed 
creatures,  covered  with  dust  and  discolored  with  powder, 
pale  with  exertion  and  discouragement,  were  lying  all  along 
the  road.  Close  behind  them  were  the  Uhlans.  There 
was  no  alternative  for  them  but  flight,  if  they  would  escape 
the  disaster  that  had  befallen  the  army  at  Sedan.  Defeat 
was  written  in  their  faces,  demoralization  was  evident  in 
their  attitude,  they  were  dejected  and  dirty,  they  were  like 
pebbles  driven  along  by  a  hurricane.  But  what  of  that  1 
Anyhow,  they  were  soldiers  of  France  ;  their  uniform  pro- 
claimed their  nationality  ;  they  wore  the  blue  tunic  and  the 
red  trousers,  —  but  what  was  of  infinitely  more  consequence, 
they  were  carrying  their  colors  back  with  them.  Their 
defeat  did  not  prevent  them  bringing  back  the  tri-color 
safe  and  sound. 

"  Great  tears  rolled  from  Victor  Hugo's  eyes.  He  leaned 
from  the  carriage-window,  and  with  a  voice  thrilling  in  its 
earnestness,  he  kept  shouting  :  '  Vive  la  France,  vive 
II 


1 62  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

I'armde,  vive  la  patrie  ! '  Exhausted  as  they  were  with 
hunger  and  fatigue,  the  bewildered  soldiers  looked  up. 
They  scarcely  comprehended  what  he  said,  but  he  con- 
tinued his  shouting,  and  it  was  almost  like  an  order  of 
quick  march  to  them  all,  when  they  made  out  that  they 
were  being  assured  that  they  had  done  their  duty,  and 
that  it  was  by  no  fault  of  theirs  that  they  had  sustained 
defeat. 

"  And  so  the  train  went  on.  The  tears  still  lost  themselves 
in  Victor  Hugo's  snowy  beard.  He  had  lived  in  the  proud 
illusion  that  France  was  invincible  ;  he  was  a  soldier's  son, 
and  could  not  conceive  that  the  soldiers  of  his  country  were 
not  pledged  to  glory." 

It  was  ten  o'clock  when  the  train  reached  Paris,  but 
a  great  crowd  which  had  been  gathering  for  hours  was 
there  to  receive  him.  With  continued  acclamations 
they  bore  him  to  the  house  of  his  friend  Paul  Meurice, 
where  he  was  to  stay,  and  called  upon  him  continually 
for  a  speech.  He  said  a  few  words  to  the  crowd,  at  the 
station  and  at  the  house,  but  gladly  sought  the  seclusion 
of  his  new  home,  being  completely  overcome  with  emo- 
tion. This  was  at  the  beginning  of  the  investment  of  the 
city  by  the  Prussian  troops,  and  he  witnessed  the  whole 
of  the  siege  of  Paris,  and  endured  its  privations  with  the 
people.  He  also  witnessed  the  terrible  deeds  of  the 
Communists,  but  —  sympathizing,  as  he  always  had  done, 
with  the  poor  and  the  downtrodden  —  only  to  condemn 
them  with  the  utmost  vehemence  of  his  nature.  Still,  he 
desired  their  pardon  when  all  was  over,  feeling  for  the 
ignorance  which  had  caused  their  misguided  zeal.  About 
this  time  his  son  Charles  died  very  suddenly,  which  was 
a  great  blow  to  him,  and  he  began  to  feel  that  all  things 
were  falling  away  from  him. 

The  death  of  his  youngest  son,  Francois,  in  1873, 
removed  the  last  prop  of  his  age,  and  only  two  young 
grandchildren  remained  of  all  who  had  composed  his 
beloved  family.  The  mother  of  these  children,  and  her 
second  husband,  however,  were  very  much  loved  by  the 


VICTOR   HUGO. 


163 


old  poet,  and  watched  very  tenderly  over  his  declining 
years.  The  children  were  a  source  of  constant  interest 
and  pleasure  to  him,  and  have  become  well  known  to  the 
world  through  his  work  upon  "  The  Art  of  being  a  Grand- 
father." Of  the  honors  which  were  showered  upon  him 
from  every  side  in  his  closing  years,  it  is  useless  to  write. 
All  are  familiar  with  them,  as  with  the  magnificent  demon- 
strations after  his  death.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  few  men 
have  been  so  honored  while  living,  or  held  in  such  sacred 
remembrance  after  death. 


GEORGE    SAND. 

UPON  no  woman  of  the  century  has  the  public  fixed 
its  eye  with  a  more  eager  interest  and  curiosity 
than  upon  Aurore  Dudevant,  known  to  the  world  as 
George  Sand. 

The  utmost  heights  of  panegyric  and  adulation  have 
been  scaled  in  describing  her  and  her  work ;  also  the 
lowest  depths  of  denunciation  and  of  calumny.  Her 
admirers  describe  her  as  being  not  only  the  greatest 
genius  of  her  time,  which  perhaps  few  will  dispute,  but 
as  being  the  most  magnificent  and  adorable  of  women 
as  well ;  while  her  detractors  can  find  no  language  in 
which  to  express  the  depths  of  their  loathing  both  for 
her  life  and  some  of  her  works.  As  usual,  a  just  estimate 
of  such  a  character  as  this  will  be  found  between  the 
two  extremes.  She  was  neither  a  monster  nor  a  saint, 
but  a  woman  of  magnificent  qualities  and  of  defects  upon 
a  corresponding  scale.  As  with  her  Hfe,  so  with  her 
works.  Some  are  undoubtedly  pernicious  to  an  alarming 
degree,  while  the  influence  of  others  cannot  by  any  stretch 
of  imagination  be  called  bad.  The  two  kinds  may  per- 
haps be  divided  under  the  head  of  earlier  and  later  works. 
When  the  tumultuous  feelings  and  wild  visions  of  youth 
were  calmed  by  age,  a  new  kind  of  literary  product  came 
forth.  And  her  life  in  its  latter  years  was  as  quiet  as  her 
books,  and  ran  as  little  against  the  traditions  and  usages 
of  mankind. 


GEORGE  SAND. 


i6s 


George  Sand  was  born  in  1804,  and  descended  from 
Marshal  Saxe,  the  natural  son  of  the  King  of  Poland. 
This  Marshal  Saxe  was  one  of  the  bravest  but  most  licen- 
tious men  of  his  time,  —  a  time  not  noted  for  its  domestic 
virtues.  She  was  brought  up  in  the  country  until  fifteen 
years  of  age,  in  the  midst  of  the  elegancies  of  an  aristo- 
cratic home.  But  her  unbounded  vitality  called  loudly 
for  an  out-of-door  life,  and  she  lived  the  life  of  a  boy, 
never  wearying  of  its  rude  sports,  and  enjoying  its  some- 
times dangerous  excitements.  At  the  close  of  her  fifteenth 
year  she  was  taken  to  the  Augustine  Convent  in  Paris, 
where  she  remained  for  three  years,  and  where  she  passed 
through  a  very  intense  religious  experience  and  came 
near  becoming  a  nun.  It  is  a  curious  piece  of  specula- 
tion to  try  to  imagine  what  her  life  as  a  nun  would  have 
been,  had  this  design  been  carried  out.  Would  the 
prayers  and  litanies,  the  penances  and  the  fasts,  have 
tamed  her  wild  blood?  Would  her  nature  have  still 
asserted  itself  under  the  cap  of  the  sister  ?  Would  she 
have  led  a  revolt  against  authority  within  the  church  as 
she  did  without?  Are  there  any  such  fierce,  tumultuous 
natures  as  hers  to-day  kneeling  on  stony  cloister  floors  ? 
Can  matins  and  vespers,  the  odors  of  incense,  and  the 
sacred  ceremonial  of  the  church  fill  up  for  an  ardent 
nature  all  that  the  service  of  the  world  supplies?  We 
shall  never  know ;  for  the  real  history  of  a  faithful  daugh- 
ter of  the  church  will  never  be  written.  The  story  of 
the  three  years  of  George  Sand's  convent  life  is  very 
charming,  full  of  variety  and  sincerity,  and  matchless  in 
point  of  style ;   but  it  is  a  fragment. 

She  came  out  of  the  convent  a  young  woman  know- 
ing absolutely  nothing  of  real  life.  The  object  of  all 
who  have  charge  of  young  girls  in  France  is  to  keep 
them  in  perfect  ignorance  of  the  world.  The  safety  that 
lies  in  knowledge  is  utterly  forbidden  to  them.  They 
are  supposed  to  be  children,  and  are  watched  over  as 
such  until  a  marriage  can  be  arranged.  And  this  mar- 
riage, whatever  it  may  be,  is  usually  accepted  by  the  girl 


1 66  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

as  an  escape  from  a  sort  of  slavery.  She  is  always  told 
that  she  may  only  do  the  things  she  desires  to  do  after 
marriage.  And  it  is  very  unusual  for  any  girl  to  object 
to  the  wishes  of  her  friends  in  this  matter.  The  whole" 
system  of  marriage  in  France  is  so  utterly  abominable 
that  no  other  civilized  land  would  tolerate  it ;  and  this 
sacrifice  of  the  young  and  ignorant  is  only  one  of  its 
diabolical  features.  Aurore  Dudevant  did  not  seem  to 
object  more  than  the  rest.  She  was  married,  and  lived 
for  eight  years  with  her  husband,  becoming  the  mother 
of  two  children. 

She  then  left  him  and  her  estate  of  Nohant,  and  went 
up  to  Paris,  taking  her  two  children  with  her.  She  sac- 
rificed her  personal  fortune  —  which  was  considerable  — 
in  doing  so,  and  was  obliged  to  earn  her  own  living.  She 
tried  various  things  in  the  artistic  line  before  she  essayed 
the  writing  of  books.  At  last  with  one  grand  bound  she 
leaped  before  the  world  in  "Indiana."  Of  course  she 
had  written  some  things  of  small  value  before  this,  but 
that  wonderful  book  was  really  her  introduction  to  the 
world.  And  it  brought  the  whole  literary  world  to  her 
feet.  Thereafter  her  friends  were  the  first  men  of  France. 
De  Lamennais,  Pierre  Leroux,  Michel,  Alfred  de  Musset, 
Chopin,  Liszt,  Delacroix,  B^ranger,  Sainte-Beuve,  Gustave 
Planche,  Mazzini,  were  her  friends,  her  intimates,  or  her 
lovers. 

Alfred  de  Musset  was  the  first  who  found  favor  with 
her  heart,  it  appears  j  and  they  were  inseparably  asso- 
ciated for  about  three  years.  This  brilliant  young  poet, 
so  sceptical,  so  sad,  so  audacious,  so  dissolute,  was  the 
first  of  this  famous  coterie  of  men  to  become  madly 
infatuated  with  George  Sand,  —  but  far  from  the  last.  It 
is  asserted  that  each  in  turn,  and  many  more  besides, 
were  the  victims  of  her  luring  wiles.  For  many  years 
the  wildest  stories  were  afloat  concerning  her  and  her 
enchantments.  And  the  fact  that  two  or  three  of  her 
most  ardent  worshippers  ended  their  lives  for  her  sake 
only  added  to  the  interest  and  the   horror  with  which 


GEORGE   SAND. 


167 


the  world  of  respectability  and  morality  looked  upon 
this  strange  woman.  She  had  broken  once  for  all  with 
the  world  of  conventionality,  and  was  free  to  follow  what- 
ever incHnation  seized  upon  her,  unrestrained  by  aught 
but  conscience,  —  for  we  are  far  from  thinking  that  she 
ever  parted  permanently  with  that  disagreeable  but  useful 
monitor. 

So  she  lived  out  her  brief  romance  with  De  Musset, 
and,  apparently  unmindful  of  his  tragic  end,  entered  upon 
a  new  epoch  of  her  life  with  that  most  remarkable 
modern  musical  genius,  Chopin. 

Poor  Alfred  de  Musset  has  had  the  sympathy  of  all 
classes  and  conditions  of  men,  apparently,  from  that  day 
to  this.  She  tried  to  vindicate  herself  in  the  affair  by 
publishing  a  book  entitled  "  Elle  et  Lui,"  "  wherein  she 
depicted  the  sufferings  of  an  angelic  woman,  all  tender- 
ness, love,  and  patience,  whose  fate  was  joined  to  that 
of  a  man  all  egotism,  selfishness,  sensuousness,  and 
eccentricity."  How  grandly  the  woman  suffered,  and 
how  wantonly  the  man  flung  happiness  away,  is  told  with 
all  the  impassioned  fervor  of  George  Sand  in  her  early 
writings.  The  taste  of  the  whole  proceeding  was  revolt- 
ingly  low,  a;id  no  more  than  matched  by  that  of  the  re- 
joinder, which  was  made  in  a  book  called  "  Lui  et  Elle," 
written  by  Paul  de  Musset  after  his  brother's  death.  In 
this  book  the  picture  is  reversed  :  "  a  hideous  woman  is 
portrayed,  utterly  selfish,  dissolute,  heartless ;  and  her 
lover,  who  is  easily  recognized  as  Musset  himself,  is  de- 
scribed as  having  almost  all  of  the  heroic  virtues."  Both 
books  were  thoroughly  French,  —  thoroughly  execrable. 

Chopin  at  first  feared  Madame  Sand  very  much,  and 
refused  to  be  presented  to  her ;  but  as  she  persisted  in  her 
desire  to  make  the  acquaintance  of  so  fine  and  delicate 
a  genius,  they  at  last  met,  and  the  fate  of  poor  Chopin 
was  at  once  sealed.  He  was  consumed  from  the  very 
first  by  an  absorbing  passion,  to  which  no  other  name  but 
morbid  infatuation  could  be  applied.  Madame  Sand  her- 
self describes  it  in  "  Lucrezia  Floriani  "  thus  : — 


1 68  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

"  For  it  seemed  as  if  this  fragile  being  was  absorbed  and 
consumed  by  his  affection.  .  .  .  Others  seek  happiness  in 
their  attachments  ;  when  they  no  longer  find  it,  the  attach- 
ment gently  vanishes.  But  he  loved  for  the  sake  of 
loving.  No  amount  of  suffering  was  sufficient  to  discourage 
him.  He  could  enter  upon  a  new  phase,  that  of  woe  ;  but 
the  phase  of  coldness  he  could  never  arrive  at.  It  would 
have  been  indeed  a  phase  of  physical  agony,  —  for  his  love 
was  his  life,  and,  delicious  or  bitter,  he  had  not  the  power 
of  withdrawing  himself  a  single  moment  from  its  domi- 
nation." 

Chopin,  suffering  from  severe  sickness,  was  ordered  to  a 
warmer  climate;  and  in  the  fall  of  1837  Madame  Sand 
accompanied  him  to  the  Island  of  Majorca,  where  she 
nursed  him  back  to  hfe,  although  his  friends  at  the  time 
of  his  departure  never  thought  to  see  him  again,  and  al- 
though he  was  dangerously  ill  for  a  long  time  after  their 
arrival.  This  soHtude,  surrounded  by  the  blue  waves  of 
the  Mediterranean,  and  shaded  by  groves  of  orange, 
seemed  fitted  by  its  exceeding  loveliness  for  the  ardent 
vows  of  youthful  lovers,  still  believing  in  their  naive  and 
sweet  illusions,  sighing  for  happiness  in  some  desert 
isle.  In  this  case  it  was  the  refuge  of  those  who  had 
grown  weary  and  disenchanted  with  hfe,  but  who  hoped 
in  deep  devotion  to  each  other  to  find  ^ome  solace  for 
their  sadness.  The  memory  of  those  days,  like  the  re- 
membrance of  an  entrancing  ecstasy  which  Fate  grants 
but  once  in  a  lifetime  to  her  most  favored  children,  al- 
ways remained  dear  to  the  heart  of  Chopin.  When  he 
was  restored  to  health  they  returned  to  Paris,  where  their 
friendship  was  continued  for  about  eight  years.  She  then 
severed  her  connection  with  him.  Liszt  asks  in  regard  to 
this,  in  his  life  of  Chopin  :  — 

"  Has  genius  ever  attained  that  utter  self-abnegation,  that 
subUme  humility  of  heart  which  gives  the  power  to  make 
those  strange  sacrifices  of  the  entire  Past,  of  the  whole 
Future  ;  those  immolations  as  courageous  as  mysterious  ; 
those  mystic  and  utter  holocausts  of  self,  not  temporary  and 


GEORGE  SAND.  1 69 

changing,  but  monotonous  and  constant,  —  through  whose 
might  alone  tenderness  may  justly  claim  the  higher  word 
devotion  ?  Has  not  the  force  of  genius  its  own  exclusive 
and  legitimate  exactions,  and  does  not  the  force  of  woman 
consist  in  the  abdication  of  all  exactions  ?  Can  the  purple 
and  burning  flames  of  genius  ever  float  over  the  immaculate 
azure  of  a  woman's  destiny  ?  " 

Liszt  also  tells  us  that  — 

*'  Chopin  spoke  frequently  and  almost  by  preference  of 
Madame  Sand,  without  bitterness  or  recrimination.  Tears 
always  filled  his  eyes  when  he  named  her  ;  but  with  a  kind 
of  bitter  sweetness  he  gave  himself  up  to  the  memories  of 
past  days,  alas,  now  stripped  of  their  manifold  significance. 
...  All  attempts  to  fix  his  attention  upon  other  objects 
were  made  in  vain ;  he  refused  to  be  comforted,  and  would 
constantly  speak  of  the  one  engrossing  subject.  .  .  .  He 
was  another  great  and  illustrious  victim  to  the  transitory 
attachments  occurring  between  persons  of  different  charac- 
ter, who,  experiencing  a  surprise  full  of  delight  in  their  first 
sudden  meeting,  mistake  it  for  a  durable  feeling,  and  build 
hopes  and  illusions  upon  it  which  can  never  be  reaHzed.  It 
is  always  the  nature  the  most  deeply  moved,  the  most  ab- 
solute in  its  hopes  and  attachments,  for  which  all  transplan- 
tation is  impossible,  which  is  destroyed  and  ruined  in  the 
painful  awakening  from  the  absorbing  dream.  .  .  .  Chopin 
felt,  and  often  repeated,  that  the  sundering  of  this  long 
friendship,  the  rupture  of  this  strong  tie,  broke  all  the  cords 
which  bound  him  to  life." 

Her  friends  say,  upon  her  part,  that  he  was  a  morbid, 
dreary  invalid,  jealous  beyond  endurance,  and  that  she 
suffered  much  at  his  hands,  and  separated  from  him  only 
when  she  could  endure  his  exactions  no  longer.  He  did 
not  long  survive  the  sundering  of  their  relations,  and  died 
in  Paris  in  1849,  very  deeply  deplored  by  all  admirers  of 
his  genius.  Chopin  was  a  wonderfully  gifted  and  very  re- 
markable man,  exceedingly  reserved,  and  with  little  of  the 
egotism  of  genius.  His  eyes  were  blue  and  dreamy,  his 
smile  very  sweet,  his  complexion  very  fair  and  delicate,  his 
hair  light  in  color,  soft  and  silky,  his  nose  shghtly  aquiline. 
His  bearing  was  so  distinguished,  and  his  manners  stamped 


1 70  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

with  so  much  high  breeding,  that  involuntarily  he  was  al- 
ways treated  e7i  prince.  His  gestures  were  many  and 
graceful,  yet  he  was  on  the  whole  serene  in  his  bearing, 
and  generally  gay  in  company,  though  subject  to  moods  of 
deep  melancholy.  He  was  passionately  devoted  to  Poland 
all  his  life,  and  when  he  was  dying  requested  the  Countess 
Potocka  to  sing  to  him  the  melodies  of  his  countr}^  He 
was  deeply  religious  in  nature,  a  devout  Catholic. 

It  was  during  the  years  of  which  we  have  been  speaking 
that  George  Sand  produced  her  most  famous  works. 
"  Indiana  "  was  followed  by  "  Valentine,"  "  Lelia,"  and 
"  Lettres  d'un  Voyageur."  Others  followed  in  quick  suc- 
cession, many  of  them  dealing  with  the  subject  of  marriage 
in  such  a  manner  as  to  raise  a  most  violent  storm  about 
her  head.  People  who  had  never  read  these  books  de- 
scribed them  as  being  of  revolting  indecency ;  and  that 
impression  prevails  in  many  quarters  even  yet.  In  point 
of  fact,  she  is  no  more  open  to  the  charge  of  indelicacy 
than  any  prominent  English  novelist  of  the  day.  The 
opinions  are  bad  enough  many  times,  but  the  style  is 
always  pure  and  perfect.  This  is  the  answer  she  herself 
made  to  her  critics  :  — 

"  I  was  astounded  when  a  few  Saint  Simonians,  con- 
scientious and  sincere  philanthropists,  estimable  and  sincere 
seekers  of  truth,  asked  me  what  I  would  put  in  the  place  of 
husbands.  I  answered  them  naively  that  it  was  marriage  ; 
in  the  same  way  as  in  the  place  of  priests  who  have  so  much 
compromised  religion,  I  believe  it  is  religion  which  ought  to 
be  put.  .  .  .  That  love  which  I  erect  and  crown  over  the  ruins 
of  the  infamous,  is  my  Utopia,  my  dream,  my  poetry.  That 
love  is  grand,  noble,  beautiful,  voluntary,  eternal  ;  but  that 
love  is  marriage  such  as  Jesus  made  it,  such  as  Saint  Paul 
explained  it.  This  I  ask  of  society  as  an  innovation,  as  an 
institution  lost  in  the  night  of  ages,  which  it  would  be  op- 
portune to  revive,  to  draw  from  the  dust  of  aeons,  and  the 
shrine  of  habits,  if  it  wishes  to  see  real  conjugal  fidelity, 
real  repose,  and  the  real  sanctity  of  the  family,  replace  the 
species  of  shameful  contract  and  stupid  despotism  bred  by 
the  infamous  decrepitude  of  the  world." 


GEORGE    SAND.  lyi 

It  must  always  be  remembered  that  she  wrote  of  French 
marriages,  in  which  there  is  no  pretence  of  having  love 
to  start  with ;  and  if  we  remember  this,  her  language  can 
scarcely  be  considered  too  strong.  The  system  is  ut- 
terly vile,  and  her  hatred  of  it  an  honor  to  her  in  every 
sense.  Had  she  done  nothing  worse  than  to  protest 
against  this  form  of  marriage  few  would  condemn  her; 
her  condemnation  comes  rather  from  the  life  she  felt  it 
consistent  with  her  theories  to  live  for  many  years. 

What  the  world  said  was  :  "  The  welfare  of  the  human 
family  demands  that  a  marriage  legally  made  shall  never  be 
questioned  or  undone.  Marriage  is  not  a  union  depending 
on  love,  or  congeniality,  or  any  such  condition.  It  is  just  as 
sacred  when  made  for  money,  or  for  ambition,  or  for  lust  of 
the  flesh,  or  for  any  other  purpose,  however  ignoble  or 
base,  as  when  contracted  in  the  spirit  of  the  purest  mutual 
love."  Against  all  this,  George  Sand,  both  with  pen  and 
life,  protested.  She  contended  that  it  was  love  alone  which 
made  marriage  anything  but  a  disgusting  sin.  We  have 
heard  much  of  this  in  these  latter  days,  even  in  our  own 
country,  but  it  was  George  Sand  who  first  struck  the  key- 
note; the  doctrine  is  essentially  hers  in  all  its  parts. 
That  she  denounced  the  whole  system  of  marriages  of 
convenience,  is  an  honor  to  her  ;  that  she  proclaimed  love 
as  the  only  true  foundation  for  marriage,  is  equally  an 
honor;  but  that  she  assailed  the  institution  of  legal 
marriage  as  a  whole,  and  overleaped  its  bounds  and 
became  a  law  to  herself  in  the  matter,  is  her  weakness 
and  her  shame.  It  is  frequently  denied  that  she  did 
this.  It  is  said  that  she  did  not  assail  the  institution 
of  marriage,  but  only  the  things  that  are  perpetrated  in 
its  name. 

"  But  all  the  same  [as  another  has  well  said],  her  eloquent 
expositions  of  ill-assorted  unions,  her  daring  appeals  from 
the  obligations  they  impose  to  the  affections  they  outrage, 
her  assertion  of  the  rights  of  nature  over  the  conventions 
of  society,  have  the  final  effect  of  justifying  the  violation  of 
duty  on  the  precarious  ground  of  passion  and  inclination. 


1^2  HOME   LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

"  Nobody  who  knows  what  the  actual  life  of  George  Sand 
has  been  can  doubt  for  a  moment  the  true  nature  of  her 
opinions  on  the  subject  of  marriage.  It  is  not  a  pleasant 
subject  to  touch,  and  we  should  shrink  from  it  if  it  were  not 
as  notorious  as  everything  else  by  which  she  has  become 
famous  in  her  time.  It  forms  in  reality  as  much  a  part  of 
the  philosophy  she  desires  to  impress  upon  the  world  as  the 
books  through  which  she  has  expanded  her  theory.  It  is 
neither  more  nor  less  than  her  theory  of  freedom  and  inde- 
pendence in  the  matter  of  passion  (we  dare  not  dignify  it  by 
any  higher  name)  put  into  action,  —  rather  vagrant  action, 
we  fear,  but  on  that  account  all  the  more  decisive." 

Society  and  she  were  naturally  at  war  from  the  begin- 
ning of  her  career ;  and  she  suffered  from  it,  though  she 
dealt  many  bitter  blows  at  it  even  while  she  suffered. 
"  What  has  it  done,"  she  says  in  one  place,  — 

"what  has  it  done  for  our  moral  education,  and  what  is  it 
doing  for  our  children,  this  society  shielded  with  such  care  ? 
Nothing.  Those  whom  it  calls  vain  complainers,  and  rebels, 
and  madmen,  may  reply :  Suffer  us  to  bewail  our  martyrs, 
poets  without  a  country  that  v/e  are,  forlorn  singers  well 
versed  in  the  causes  of  their  misery  and  of  our  own.  You 
do  not  comprehend  the  malady  which  killed  them  ;  they 
themselves  did  not  comprehend  it.  If  one  or  two  of  us  at 
the  present  day  open  our  eyes  to  a  new  light,  is  it  not  by  a 
strange  and  unaccountable  good  Providence  ?  and  have  we 
not  to  seek  our  grain  of  faith  in  storm  and  darkness,  com- 
bated by  doubt,  irony,  the  absence  of  all  sympathy,  all  ex- 
ample, all  brotherly  aid,  all  protection  and  countenance  in 
high  places  ?  Try  yourselves  to  speak  to  your  brethren  heart 
to  heart,  conscience  to  conscience  !  Try  it !  but  you  can- 
not, busied  as  you  are  with  watching  and  patching  up  in  all 
directions  your  dykes  which  the  flood  is  invading ;  the  ma- 
terial existence  of  this  society  of  yours  absorbs  all  your  cares, 
and  requires  more  than  all  your  efforts.  Meanwhile  the 
powers  of  human  thought  are  growing  into  strength  and  rise 
on  all  sides  around  you.  Among  these  threatening  appari- 
tions there  are  some  which  fade  away  and  re-enter  the  dark- 
ness, because  the  hour  of  life  has  not  yet  struck,  and  the  fiery 
spirit  which  quickened  them  could  strive  no  longer  with  the 


GEORGE    SAND.  j^^ 

horrors  of  the  present  chaos  ;  but  there  are  others  that  can 
wait,  and  you  will  find  them  confronting  you,  up  and  alive  to 
say,  'You  have  allowed  the  death  of  our  brethren,  and  we, 
we  do  not  mean  to  die.'  " 

But  she  rises  after  a  while  out  of  her  depths  of  passionate 
contention  with  a  world  out  of  joint,  with  the  reign  of 
stupidity  and  the  tyranny  of  convention,  into  serener 
heights;  and  in  her  later  books  she  gives  us  exquisite 
pictures  of  nature,  with  which  she  has  the  closest  sym- 
pathy ;  lovely  stories  of  rural  life  and  gentle  tales  of  per- 
fectly pure  love.  Her  passionate  resentment  against  the 
world  has  worn  itself  out,  and  she  is  calmer,  wiser  now. 
Her  daughter,  too,  Solange,  has  grown  to  be  a  woman 
and  has  a  lover  of  her  own,  and  the  household  thoughts 
and  cares,  and  the  tenderness  of  a  serious  and  unselfish 
cast  which  creep  into  a  mother's  heart  upon  such  occa- 
sions, shed  their  sweetness  upon  this  wayward  soul,  and 
inspire  it  with  congenial  utterances.  Now  she  looks  back 
and  says  :  — 

"  My  poor  children,  my  own  flesh  and  blood,  will  perhaps 
turn  upon  me  and  say :  '  You  are  leading  us  wrong ;  you 
mean  to  ruin  us  as  well  as  yourself.  Are  you  not  unhappy, 
reprobated,  evil  spoken  of?  What  have  you  gained  by  these 
unequal  struggles,  by  these  much-trumpeted  duels  of  yours 
with  Custom  and  Behef  ?  Let  us  do  as  others  do  ;  let  us  get 
what  is  to  be  got  from  this  easy  and  tolerant  world.'  This 
is  what  they  will  say  to  me.  Or  at  best,  if,  out  of  tenderness 
for  me,  or  from  their  own  natural  disposition,  they  give  ear 
to  my  words  and  beheve  me,  whither  should  I  guide  them  ? 
Into  what  abysses  shall  we  go  and  plunge  ourselves,  we 
three  ?  for  we  shall  be  our  own  three  upon  earth,  and  not 
one  soul  with  us.  What  shall  I  reply  to  them,  if  they  come 
and  say  to  me :  'Yes,  life  is  unbearable  in  a  world  hke  this. 
Let  us  die  together.  Show  us  the  path  of  Bernica,  or  the 
Lake  of  Stenio,  or  the  glaciers  of  Jacques  '  ?  " 

Again,  in  the  later  times,  she  said  :  — 

"  Let  us  all  try  to  be  saints,  and  if  we  succeed  we  will 
know  all  the  more  how  difficult  a  thing  it  is,  and  what  indul- 


1^4  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

gence  is  owed  to  those  who  are  not  yet  saints.  Then  we 
shall  acknowledge  that  there  is  something  to  be  modified, 
either  in  law  or  opinion ;  for  the  aim  of  society  should  be  to 
render  perfection  accessible  to  all,  and  man  is  very  feeble 
when  he  struggles  alone  against  the  mad  torrent  of  custom 
and  of  ideas." 

A  very  wise,  saying  truly,  written  out  of  her  own  experi- 
ence. Sad,  too,  as  is  much  of  her  later  writing,  though 
there  is  not  in  it  the  passionate  despau:  of  her  earlier 
work. 

She  lived  to  be  seventy-two  years  old,  and  had  known 
and  experienced  many  phases  of  life,  —  the  tumultuous 
passions  and  the  wild  revolt  of  youth,  the  cooler  and 
more  self-contained  life  of  middle  age,  and  the  sombre 
color  of  a  rather  hopeless  old  age.  Even  in  age  she  had 
her  pleasures,  however.  She  delighted  in  her  grandchil- 
dren, in  books,  in  pictures,  in  nature,  and  in  work.  Her 
unwearied  pen  moved  until  the  last,  and  did  not  lose  its 
cunning.  There  was  much  of  the  old  strength  and  power 
to  the  last.  But  she  had  ceased  to  deske  to  destroy; 
she  sought  at  last  to  build  up. 

Here  are  two  descriptions  of  her  as  she  appeared  to 
different  observers,  in  youth  and  in  later  Hfe.  Heine, 
who  saw  with  the  eye  of  an  artist  and  wrote  with  the  pen 
of  a  critic,  described  her  in  youth  :  — 

♦'  George  Sand,  the  greatest  of  French  writers,  is  a  woman 
of  remarkable  beauty.  Like  the  genius  revealed  in  her 
writings,  her  countenance  may  rather  be  called  beautiful 
than  fascinating.  The  face  of  George  Sand  has  precisely 
the  character  of  Grecian  regularity.  The  cut  of  her  features 
has  not  exactly  the  severity  of  antique  models ;  her  face  is 
softened  by  modern  sentiment,  which  veils  it  with  sadness. 
Her  forehead  is  not  high,  and  her  rich  and  luxuriant  brown 
hair  falls  from  either  side  of  her  head  upon  her  shoulders. 
Her  eyes  are  not  brilhant ;  has  their  fire  gone  out  under  fre- 
quent tears,  or  only  in  her  writings  ?  George  Sand's  eyes 
are  soft  and  tranquil.  Her  nose  is  neither  aquiline,  nor 
spiritual,  nor  pugged  ;  it  is  a  straight  and  ordinary  nose. 
Around  her  mouth  habitually  plays  a  smile  of  kindness  and 


GEORGE  SAND.  I  75 

benevolence,  but  not  very  bewitching ;  her  inferior  lip  pro- 
trudes a  little,  and  seems  to  reveal  a  fatigue  of  the  senses. 
Her  chin  is  finely  formed.  Her  shoulders  are  magnificent ; 
also  her  hands,  her  arms,  her  feet,  which  are  very  small. 
George  Sand  is  beautiful  like  the  Venus  of  Milo." 

Now  hear  one  who  described  her  in  old  age  :  — 

"  She  was  not  at  all  Hke  the  woman  of  my  imagination ; 
she  looked  very  httle  like  the  bold  and  vigorous  thinker  she 
is ;  one  would  have  taken  her  at  first  sight  for  a  gentle,  se- 
rene old  grandmother.  She  is  short,  and  inclined  to  einbo7i- 
poi7it.  Her  hair,  which  is  still  abundant,  though  faded  by 
time,  was  simply  arranged.  Her  features  are  not  striking  ; 
her  eyes  have  that  vague,  dreamy  look  which  she  herself 
refers  to  in  her  '  Histoire  de  Ma  Vie '  as  one  of  her  marked 
characteristics." 

Most  people  in  her  youth  found  her  beautiful,  though 
some  thought  her  face  heavy,  and  even  coarse ;  but  she 
had  a  matchless  charm  of  manner  which  had  far  more 
effect  than  any  mere  beauty.  She  seemed  to  enslave  men 
at  her  will.  Poets,  artists,  statesmen,  and  priests,  were  all 
at  her  side,  or  at  her  feet.  Her  manner,  at  least  in  later 
life,  was  very  retiring,  and  she  was  singularly  modest  and 
free  from  literary  vanity.  When  asked  once  which  of  her 
works  she  preferred,  she  answered,  apparently  quite  sin- 
cerely, "  Mon  Dieu,  I  detest  them  all." 

Let  us  close  with  Matthew  Arnold's  tribute  of  re- 
spect :  — 

"  It  is  silent,  that  eloquent  voice ;  it  is  sunk,  that  noble, 
that  speaking  head ;  we  sum  up  as  we  best  can  what  she 
said  to  us,  and  we  bid  her  adieu.  From  many  hearts,  in 
many  lands,  a  troop  of  tender  and  grateful  regrets  converge 
toward  her  humble  churchyard  in  Berry.  Let  them  be 
joined  by  these  words  of  sad  homage  from  one  of  a  nation 
which  she  esteemed,  and  which  knew  her  very  little  and  very 
ill.  Her  guiding  thought,  the  guiding  thought  which  she  did 
her  best  to  make  ours  too,  '  the  sentiment  of  the  ideal  life, 
which  is  none  other  than  man's  normal  life  as  we  shall  one 


176 


HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 


day  know  it,'  is  in  harmony  with  words  and  promises  fami- 
liar to  that  sacred  place  where  she  lies." 

Over  her  grave  might  well  be  written  those  words  over 
another  grave  in  Pere-la-Chaise  :  — 

He  Knoweth. 


THOMAS    BABINGTON    MACAULAY. 


IN  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  great- 
grandfather of  the  famous  Lord  ^^lacaulay,  the  author 
of  the  glowing  and  impassioned  History  of  England,  was 
minister  of  Tiree  and  Coll,  when  his  stipend  was  taken 
from  him  at  the  instance  of  the  Laird  of  Ardchattan. 
The  slight  inconvenience  of  ha\ang  nothing  to  live  upon 
did  not  seem  to  incline  the  old  minister  in  the  least  de- 
gree to  resign  his  charge  and  to  seek  a  flock  who  could 
feed  their  shepherd.  He  stayed  valiantly  on,  doing  his 
duty  faithfully  by  his  humble  people.  But  after  some 
time  had  elapsed,  '^  his  health  being  much  impaired,  and 
there  being  no  church  or  meeting-house,  he  was  exposed 
to  the  violence  of  the  weather  at  all  seasons  ;  and  having 
no  manse  or  glebe,  and  no  fund  for  communion  ele- 
ments, and  having  no  mortification  for  schools  or  other 
pious  purposes  in  either  of  the  islands,  and  the  air  being 
unwholesome,"  —  he  was  finally  compelled  to  leave,  much 
to  his  own  regret  and  that  of  his  poor  little  flock. 

The  reasons  enumerated  certainly  seem  sufficient  to  us 
in  these  later  days  for  a  change  of  parishes ;  and  indeed 
some  modem  ministers  have  been  known  to  change 
upon  provocations  less  than  these.  There  was  fine  stuff 
in  the  old  Scotch  ministers  of  that  day,  and  it  is  pleasant 
to  hear  that  this  one  found  a  new  charge  to  which  he 
ministered  for  half  a  century.     There  were  many  other 

12 


1^8  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

ministers  in  the  Macaulay  family  during  several  genera- 
tions ;  but  Zachary  Macaulay,  the  father  of  the  his- 
torian, seemed  born  with  a  taste  for  business,  and  was 
accordingly  sent  out  to  Jamaica  to  learn  mercantile  af- 
fairs, when  quite  young.  Here  he  saw  much  of  negro 
slavery,  and  became  so  much  impressed  with  its  horrors, 
and  so  filled  with  sympathy  for  the  black  race,  that  he  re- 
solved to  devote  himself  to  their  interests.  He  accord- 
ingly resigned  his  position  in  Jamaica  and  returned  to 
Scotland,  where  until  his  death  he  labored  in  the  unpop- 
ular and  misunderstood  ranks  of  the  abolitionists.  A 
colony  was  projected  in  Sierra  Leone  for  freed  slaves,  and 
young  Macaulay  was  appointed  a  member  of  the  council, 
and  sailed  for  Africa  to  take  practical  part  in  the  work  for 
the  negro.  Soon  after  his  arrival  there  he  succeeded  to 
the  position  of  Governor,  and  for  some  time  worked  he- 
roically in  that  capacity.  But  in  the  very  midst  of  the 
Reign  of  Terror  in  France,  a  French  fleet  bore  down  upon 
the  little  colony  and  almost  wiped  it  out  of  existence. 
Zachary  Macaulay  stayed  for  a  year  after  the  attack, 
heroically  trying  to  rehabilitate  the  little  colony,  and  par- 
tially succeeded  in  doing  so,  when,  his  health  faihng,  he 
returned  to  England,  where  he  gave  almost  the  entire 
remaining  years  of  his  life  to  the  work  of  negro  emanci- 
pation in  one  form  or  another. 

Thomas  Babington  Macaulay  was  bom  the  25  th  of 
October,  1800,  the  day  of  St.  Crispin  and  the  anniversary 
of  Agincourt.  He  drew  in  the  love  of  freedom  with  his 
earliest  breath,  and  he  was  reared  with  the  utmost  care 
by  those  high  morahsts,  his  noble  parents.  He  was  a 
prodigy  from  babyhood.  From  the  time  he  was  three 
years  old  he  read  incessantly,  for  the  most  part  lying  on 
the  rug  before  the  fire.  Many  laughable  stories  are  told 
of  his  precocity,  particularly  of  the  fine  language  he  used 
when  a  mere  infant.  For  instance,  when  four  years  old 
some  hot  coffee  was  spilled  on  his  legs,  and  after  a  little 
time  a  lady  inquired  of  him  if  he  felt  better  now,  when 
the    phenomenon    replied,   "  Thank    you,   madam,   the 


THOMAS  BAB/NG  TON  MA  CA  ULA  Y.  i  79 

agony  is  abated."  Of  course  so  quaint  and  remarkable  a 
child  was  much  petted  and  spoiled,  and  probably  rendered 
somewhat  conceited  and  priggish.  But  he  was  docile  and 
affectionate,  and  was  then,  as  always  thereafter,  the  idol  of 
his  family. 

After  he  left  Cambridge  he  went  up  to  London,  and 
soon  after  wrote  his  article  on  Milton  for  the  "  Edinburgh 
Review."  Like  Byron,  he  awoke  one  morning  and  found 
himself  famous.  Compliments  and  enthusiastic  letters 
poured  in  upon  him  from  all  sides.  The  one  compliment 
which  he  said  gave  him  the  most  pleasure  was  Jeffrey's 
word  at  the  end  of  a  business  note  :  "  The  more  I  think, 
the  less  I  can  conceive  where  you  picked  up  that  style." 
And  no  wonder ;  that  style  was  not  a  thing  to  be  picked 
up  every  day.  Jeffrey  did  well  to  wonder.  Macaulay  at 
once  became  the  fashion,  and  invitations  were  showered 
upon  him  from  every  side,  many  of  which  he  accepted.; 
The  first  flush  of  such  a  success  as  Macaulay's  must  have 
been  very  sweet  to  a  young  man  of  his  genial  nature^ 
He  was  thus  described  by  Praed  :  — 

"  There  came  up  a  short,  manly  figure,  marvellously  up- 
right, with  a  bad  neckcloth,  and  one  hand  in  his  waistcoat 
pocket.  Of  regular  beauty  he  had  little  to  boast ;  but  in 
faces  where  there  is  an  expression  of  great  power  or  of  great 
good-humor,  or  both,  you  do  not  regret  its  absence." 

■  He  had  a  massive  head,  and  features  powerful  and 
rugged,  but  peculiarly  expressive.  His  face  was  often- 
times all  aglow  with  emotion.  He  dressed  badly  but  not 
cheaply ;  indeed,  his  wardrobe,  Trevelyan  tells  us,  was 
always  enormously  overstocked.  "  Later  in  life  he  in- 
dulged himself  in  an  apparently  inexhaustible  succession 
of  handsome  embroidered  waistcoats,  which  he  used  to 
regard  with  much  complacency/^' 

Among  the  first  places  to  which  the  new  lion  was  in- 
vited was  of  course  the  famous  resort  of  celebrities,  Hol- 
land House ;  and  in  his  letters  to  his  two  younger  sisters, 
—  to  whom  he  was  always  the  most  devoted  of  brothers, 


l8o  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

—  he  frequently  narrates  his  experiences  there.     Let  us 
glance  at  a  few  of  these  pictures  :  — 

"  Well,  my  dear,  I  have  been  to  Holland  House.  I  took 
a  glass  coach,  and  arrived,  through  a  fine  avenue  of  elms,  at 
the  great  entrance  about  seven  o'clock.  The  house  is  de- 
lightful, the  very  perfection  of  the  old  Elizabethan  style,  — 
a  considerable  number  of  very  large  and  very  comfortable 
rooms,  rich  with  antique  carving  and  gilding,  but  carpeted 
and  furnished  with  all  the  skill  of  the  best  modern  uphol- 
sterers. Lady  Holland  is  certainly  a  woman  of  considerable 
talent  and  great  acquirements.  To  me  she  was  excessively 
courteous ;  yet  there  was  a  haughtiness  in  her  courtesy 
which,  even  after  all  that  I  had  heard  of  her,  surprised  me. 
The  centurion  did  not  keep  his  soldiers  in  better  order  than 
she  keeps  her  guests.  It  is  to  one,  '  Go,'  and  he  goeth  ;  and 
to  another,  '  Do  this,'  and  it  is  done.  '  Ring  the  bell,  Mr. 
Macaulay.'  '  Lay  down  that  screen.  Lord  Russell ;  you  will 
spoil  it.'  '  Mr.  Allen,  take  a  candle  and  show  Mr.  Cradock 
the  picture  of  Bonaparte.'  Her  ladyship  used  me  as  well,  I 
believe,  as  it  is  her  way  to  use  anybody.  .  .  . 

"  I  had  a  good  deal  of  pleasant  conversation  with  Rogers. 
He  was  telling  me  of  the  curiosity  and  interest  which 
attached  to  the  persons  of  Sir  Walter  Scott  and  Lord 
Byron.  When  Scott  dined  at  a  gentleman's  house  in 
London  not  long  ago,  all  the  servant-maids  in  the  house 
asked  leave  to  stand  in  the  passage  and  see  him  pass.  He 
was,  as  you  may  conceive,  greatly  flattered.  About  Lord 
Byron,  whom  he  knew  well,  he  told  me  some  curious  an- 
ecdotes. When  Byron  passed  through  Florence,  Rogers 
was  there.  The  inn  had  fifty  windows  in  front.  All  were 
crowded  with  women,  mostly  Englishwomen,  to  catch  a 
ghmpse  of  their  favorite  poet.  Among  them  were  some  at 
whose  houses  he  had  been  in  England  oftentimes,  and  with 
whom  he  had  lived  on  friendly  terms.  He  would  not  notice 
them  or  return  their  salutations.  Rogers  was  the  only  per- 
son he  spoke  to.  The  worst  thing  that  I  know  about  Lord 
Byron  is  the  very  unfavorable  impression  which  he  made  on 
men  who  certainly  were  not  inclined  to  judge  him  harshly, 
and  who  were  not  personally  ill-used  by  him.  Sharp 
and  Rogers  both  speak  of  him  as  an  unpleasant,  affected, 
splenetic  person.     I  have  heard  hundreds  and  thousands  of 


THOMAS  BABING  TON  MA  CA  ULA  V.  1 8 1 

persons  who  never  knew  him  rant  about  him,  but  I  never 
heard  a  single  expression  of  fondness  for  him  fall  from  the 
lips  of  any  one  who  knew  him  well.  Yet  even  now  there  are 
those  who  cannot  talk  a  quarter  of  an  hour  about  Charles 
Fox  without  tears  —  after  twenty-five  years.  .  .  . 

"  In  the  evening  Lord  John  Russell  came,  and  old  Talley- 
rand. I  had  seen  Talleyrand  before.  I  now  had  the  pleas- 
ure of  listening  to  his  conversation.  He  is  certainly  the 
greatest  curiosity  I  ever  fell  in  with.  His  head  is  sunk 
down  between  two  high  shoulders.  One  of  his  feet  is  hide- 
ously distorted.  His  face  is  pale  as  that  of  a  corpse,  and 
wrinkled  to  a  frightful  degree.  His  eyes  have  an  odd,  glassy 
stare.  His  hair,  thickly  powdered  and  pomatumed,  hangs 
down  his  shoulders  on  each  side  as  straight  as  a  pound  of 
tallow  candles.  His  conversation,  however,  soon  makes  you 
forget  his  ugliness  and  infirmities.'* 

One  more  glimpse  of  Lady  Holland :  — 

"  Her  ladyship  is  all  courtesy  and  kindness  to  me;  but  her 
demeanor  to  some  others,  particularly  to  poor  Allen,  is  such 
as  quite  pains  me  to  witness.  He  is  really  treated  like  a 
negro  slave.  '  Mr.  Allen,  go  into  my  drawing-room  and 
bring  my  reticule.'  '  Mr.  Allen,  go  and  see  what  can  be  the 
matter  that  they  do  not  bring  up  dinner.'  '  Mr.  Allen,  there 
is  not  turtle-soup  enough  for  you.  You  must  take  gravy- 
soup  or  none.'  Yet  I  scarcely  pity  the  man.  He  has  an 
independent  income,  and  if  he  can  stoop  to  be  ordered 
about  like  a  footman  I  cannot  so  much  blame  her  for  the 
contempt  with  which  she  treats  him." 

Here  are  one  or  two  touches  of  nature  :  — 

"  Get  Blackwood's  new  number.  There  is  a  description 
of  me  in  it:  '  A  little,  splay-footed,  ugly  dumpling  of  a  fellow, 
with  a  mouth  from  ear  to  ear.'  Conceive  how  such  a  chars^e 
must  affect  a  man  so  enamoured  of  his  own  beauty  as  I  am." 

•'  After  the  debate  I  walked  about  the  streets  with  Bulwer 
till  near  three  o'clock.  I  spoke  to  him  about  his  novels  with 
perfect  sincerity,  praising  warmly  and  criticising  freely.  He 
took  the  praise  as  a  greedy  boy  takes  an  apple-pie,  and  the 
criticism  as  a  good,  dutiful  boy  takes  senna-tea.  At  all 
events  I  shall  expect  him  to  puff  me  well.  I  do  not  see  why 
I  should  not  have  my  puffers  as  well  as  my  neighbors." 


i82  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

Here  is  a  glimpse  of  the  domestic  economy  of  the 
great  Holland  House  :  — 

"  The  dinner  was  not  as  good  as  usual,  and  her  ladyship 
kept  up  a  continued  lamentation  during  the  whole  repast. 
I  should  never  have  found  out  that  everything  was  not  as  it 
should  be,  but  for  her  criticisms.  The  soup  was  too  salt ; 
the  cutlets  were  not  exactly  cotnme  il faut  j  and  the  pudding 
was  hardly  enough  boiled.  I  was  amused  to  hear  from  the 
splendid  mistress  of  such  a  house  the  same  sort  of  apologies 

which made   when  her  cook  forgot  the  joint  and  sent 

too  small  a  dinner  to  table." 

All  these  artless  details  were  given  to  amuse  his  young 
sisters  at  home,  —  the  beings  he  loved  best  on  earth,  not 
only  at  this  time  but  throughout  Hfe.  If  he  ever  had  any 
deeper  love  for  another,  there  is  no  hint  given  of  it  in  his 
life  or  letters.  Probably  for  many  reasons  he  never  con- 
templated marriage.  When  he  was  young  he  was  too 
poor  to  think  of  it ;  when  he  was  older  he  had  his  own 
family  upon  his  hands,  and  cared  for  them  munificently  to 
the  end.  He  was  very  generous  with  his  money  and  never 
learned  the  art  of  saving.  It  would  seem  scarcely  possi- 
ble that  a  man  of  his  warm  heart  and  ardent  temperament 
could  have  gone  through  hfe  with  no  romance ;  but  if  he 
had  any  such  experience  it  has  not  been  given  to  the 
world.  He  loved  his  sisters,  and  his  nephews  and  nieces, 
with  the  most  passionate  devotion,  and  was  in  turn  idolized 
by  them.  J  His  nephew  says  :  — 

*'  It  must  be  acknowledged  that  where  he  loved,  he  loved 
more  entirely  and  more  exclusively  than  was  well  for  him- 
self. It  was  improvident  in  him  to  consecrate  such  intensity 
of  feeling  upon  relations  who,  however  deeply  they  were 
attached  to  him,  could  not  always  be  in  a  position  to  requite 
him  with  the  whole  of  their  time  and  the  whole  of  their  heart. 
He  suffered  much  for  that  improvidence,  but  he  was  too  just 
and  kind  to  permit  others  to  suffer  with  him  ;  and  it  is  not 
for  one  who  obtained  by  inheritance  a  share  of  his  inestima- 
ble affection  to  regret  a  weakness  such  as  this." 


THOMAS  BABINGTON  MA  CAUL  AY.  183 

This  refers  to  his  grief  at  the  marriage  of  his  sisters, 
which  was  really  great  and  enduring.  He  had  planned 
to  have  them  in  his  home,  and  not  to  be  in  theirs ;  and 
when  it  turned  out  otherwise  he  could  not  at  first  be 
reconciled  to  it.  His  sister  Nancy  went  out  with  him  to 
India  after  his  appointment  there,  and  soon  fell  in  with 
young  Trevelyan,  —  to  whom  she  became  engaged,  with 
her  brother's  approval  but  to  his  great  grief.  He  calls  it 
"  a  tragical  denouement  to  an  absurd  plot."  After  the 
marriage  they  formed  one  household  during  his  stay  in 
India,  and  her  home  was  to  all  intents  and  purposes  his 
own  during  life.  His  youngest  sister  died  during  his  stay 
abroad,  and  of  her  he  thus  writes  :  — 

"  The  last  month  has  been  the  most  painful  I  ever  went 
through.  Indeed,  I  never  knew  before  what  it  was  to  be 
miserable.  Early  in  January  letters  from  England  brought  me 
news  of  the  death  of  my  sister.  What  she  was  to  me  no  words 
can  express.  I  will  not  say  that  she  was  dearer  to  me  than 
anything  in  the  world,  for  my  sister  who  was  with  me  was 
equally  dear;  but  she  was  as  dear  to  me  as  one  human 
being  can  be  to  another.  Even  now,  when  time  has  begun 
to  do  its  healing  work,  I  cannot  write  about  her  without 
being  altogether  unmanned." 

''  His  only  solace  was  found  in  books.  He  could  at  any 
time  bury  himself  in  these  and  forget  all  the  world.  Proba- 
bly there  never  was  such  a  reader  before.  He  devoured 
books  like  a  gourmand.  He  read  everything  —  Greek, 
Latin,  German,  Italian,  French,  Spanish,  Portuguese ; 
and  books  of  all  kinds  in  these  languages,  —  history, 
belles-lettres,  poetry,  novels,  old  chronicles.  He  seemed 
to  have  a  passion  for  all.  He  would  read  a  book  in  an 
hour  which  it  would  take  any  one  else  half  a  day  to  get 
through  in  the  poorest  shape.  And  he  would  know  what 
was  in  it,  too.  He  read  enormous  quantities  of  novels 
always,  and  was  very  fond  of  poor  ones,  —  none  too 
poor  for  him  were  written  at  that  time.  It  is  a  question 
whether  if  he  had  lived  till  this  day  the  same  thing  could 


1 84  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

have  been  said  of  him.  It  is  not  recorded  whether  he 
ever  encountered  any  of  Anthony  TroUope's  works  during 
his  Hfe. 

If  Macaulay  had  not  been  known  as  a  great  man  of 
letters  he  would  probably  have  been  known  as  a  great 
orator.  He  was,  indeed,  one  of  the  best  speakers  of  his 
day,  and  the  House  of  Commons,  that  listens  to  so  few 
speakers,  always  gave  its  attention  to  him.  It  seems  a 
great  pity  that  he  should  have  given  so  many  years  of  his 
life  to  Parliament,  and  to  official  work,  when  his  true 
career  undoubtedly  was  hterature  pure  and  simple,  for 
which  no  man  of  his  time  was  so  splendidly  equipped, 
both  by  nature  and  by  preparation.  We  ought  to  have 
had  from  him  more  enduring  historical  works,  and  more  of 
his  masterly  estimates  of  the  works  of  other  men.  After 
his  retirement  into  private  Hfe,  in  1847,  he  enjoyed  his 
freedom  intensely,  and  much  regretted  that  he  had  not  ob- 
tained it  sooner.  J  He  enjoyed  the  pleasures  of  society 
greatly  at  this  time.  He  was  the  centre  of  a  gifted  circle 
of  men  —  the  most  brilliant  of  their  time  —  all  of  whom 
were  his  close  friends  and  admirers.  How  brilliantly  these 
men  talked  is  already  a  matter  of  tradition.  Macaulay 
was  the  most  wonderful  conversationalist,  probably,  since 
Dr.  Johnson,  not  even  excepting  Carlyle,  or  Sydney  Smith, 
or  Coleridge.  Very  laughable  stories  are  told,  of  course, 
of  a  man  who  would  talk  three  hours  without  pause, 
and  undoubtedly  there  were  many  people  sadly  bored  by 
him  in  his  day ;  but  to  those  who  could  appreciate  the 
remarkable  stores  of  information  he  possessed,  and  the 
lucidity  with  which  he  could  deal  them  forth,  —  to  say 
nothing  of  his  rhetorical  splendors,  —  those  discourses  of 
his  were  never  tedious,  but  full  of  supreme  interest.  To 
be  sure,  Sydney  Smith  sneered  at  his  "wonderful  stores 
of  very  accurate  —  misinformation,"  but  he  was  one  who 
did  not  like  a  rival  near  the  throne ;  and  in  Macaulay 's 
absence  he  was  himself  the  sun  around  which  the  social 
universe  revolved.  Thackeray  wrote  after  Macaulay's 
death :  — 


THOMAS  BAB  INC  TON  MAC  A  UL  AY. 


185 


"  Now  that  wonderful  tongue  is  to  speak  no  more,  will  not 
many  a  man  grieve  that  he  no  longer  can  listen  ?  To  re- 
member the  talk  is  to  wonder,  to  think  not  only  of  the  treas- 
ures he  had  stored,  but  of  the  trifles  which  he  could  produce 
with  equal  readiness.  What  a  vast,  brilliant,  wonderful 
store  of  learning  he  had  ;  what  strange  lore  would  he  not 
fetch  at  your  bidding." 

No  report  of  these  conversations  exists,  except  such  as 
is  found  scattered  in  private  diaries.  In  these  there  are 
records  of  many  an  Attic  night,  and  still  more  agreeable 
morning.  Lord  Carlisle's  journal  contains  as  many  of 
these  records,  perhaps,  as  any  one's.  He  makes  glowing 
mention  of  Macaulay  and  his  eloquence,  after  nearly  every 
meeting  of  the  famous  circle.  The  only  criticism  he  made, 
and  it  is  one  that  was  frequently  made  on  Macaulay,  was 
that  it  was  remarkable  what  quantities  of  trash  he  remem- 
bered. He  could  repeat  pages  of  the  very  dreariest  stuff 
that  ever  was  written,  and  was  in  danger  of  doing  so  on 
small  provocation,  —  an  infliction  it  must  have  been  hard 
for  his  friends  to  have  endured  sometimes.  Great  stories 
are  told  of  his  remarkable  memory, — one  seldom  equalled 
by  any  man.  He  w^as  always  willing  to  accept  a  friendly 
challenge  to  a  feat  of  memory.  One  day  in  the  board- 
room of  the  British  Museum  he  handed  to  Lord  Aberdeen 
a  sheet  of  foolscap  covered  with  writing  arranged  in  parallel 
columns  down  each  of  the  four  pages.  This  document, 
on  which  the  ink  was  still  wet,  proved  to  be  a  full  list  of 
the  Senior  Wranglers  at  Cambridge,  with  their  dates  and 
colleges  for  the  hundred  years  during  which  the  names 
of  Senior  Wranglers  had  been  recorded  in  the  University 
Calendar.  On  another  occasion  Sir  David  Dundas 
asked :  — 

"'Macaulay,  do  you  know  your  Popes?'  *  No,'  was  the 
answer ;  '  I  always  get  wrong  among  the  Innocents.'  '  But 
you  can  say  your  Archbishops  of  Canterbury  ?  '  '  Any  fool,' 
said  Macaulay,  '  could  say  his  Archbishops  of  Canterbury 
backwards  ; '  and  he  went  off"  at  a  score,  drawing  breath  only 
once  in  order  to  remark  on  some  oddity." 


1 86  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

He  was  easily  bored  in  general  society,  and  in  later  life 
rarely  went  beyond  his  little  circle  of  intimates.  Children 
were  the  only  people  of  whom  he  never  tired,  and  he  was 
a  royal  companion  to  them  always.  He  was  unrivalled  in 
the  invention  of  games,  and  never  wearied  of  repeating 
them.  He  had  an  inexhaustible  repertory  of  small  dramas 
for  his  nieces,  and  sustained  a  great  variety  of  parts  with 
much  skill.  '  An  old  friend  of  the  family  writes  :  — 

"  There  was  one  never-failing  game  of  building  up  a  den 
with  newspapers  behind  the  sofa,  and  of  enacting  robbers 
and  tigers ;  we  shrieking  with  terror,  but  always  begging 
him  to  begin  again,  of  which  we  never  grew  weary." 

He  writes  to  a  friend  concerning  Dickens,  that  he  did 
not  think  it  possible  for  fiction  to  affect  him  as  the  death  of 
Httle  Nell  had  done,  and  adds  :  — 

"  Have  you  seen  the  first  number  of  *  Dombey  '  ?  There 
is  not  much  in  it,  but  there  is  one  passage  which  made  me 
cry  as  if  my  heart  would  break.  It  is  the  description  of  a  lit- 
tle girl  who  has  just  lost  her  mother,  and  is  unkindly  treated 
by  everybody.  Images  of  that  kind  always  overpower  me 
even  when  the  artist  is  less  skilful  than  Dickens." 

In  truth,  his  extreme  sensibility  was  often  a  great  annoy- 
ance to  him.  He  strove  very  hard  to  overcome  it,  but  in 
vain  ;  and  he  was  moved  to  tears  upon  a  great  many  occa- 
sions, when  he  would  have  given  much  to  be  able  to  con- 
trol himself. 

Let  us  quote  a  little  more  from  Thackeray's  tribute  to 
him. 

"  All  sorts  of  successes  were  easy  to  him.  As  a  lad  he 
goes  down  into  the  arena  with  others,  and  wins  all  the 
prizes  to  which  he  has  a  mind.  A  place  in  the  Senate  is 
straightway  offered  to  the  young  man.  He  takes  his  seat 
there,  he  speaks  when  so  minded,  without  party  anger  or 
intrigue,  but  not  without  party  faith  and  a  sort  of  heroic 
enthusiasm  for  his  cause ;  and  speech  is  also  a  success  to  him. 
Still  he  is  a  poet  and  philosopher  even  more  than  orator. 
.  .  .  Years  ago  there  was  a  wretched  outcry  raised  because 


THOMAS  BABING  TON  MA  CA  ULA  V.  187 

he  dated  a  letter  from  Windsor  Castle,  where  he  was  staying. 
Immortal  gods!  was  not  this  man  a  fit  guest  for  any  palace 
in  the  world,  or  a  fit  companion  for  any  man  or  woman  in  it? 
The  place  of  such  a  natural  chief  was  among  the  first  in  the 
land." 

Macaulay  died,  in  i860,  a  sudden  and  painless  death, 
and  hes  buried  in  Westminster  Abbey,  in  the  Poet's  Cor- 
ner, near  the  west  wall  of  the  South  Transept,  at  the  feet 
of  Addison. 


EDWARD    BULWER   LYTTON. 

THE  British  aristocracy  has  given  to  literature  a  few 
names  which  the  world  will  not  willingly  let  die. 
But  its  contribution  to  the  world's  genius  has  not  been 
great  in  proportion  to  its  numbers,  its  exceptional  oppor- 
tunities for  culture,  and  the  great  prominence  which  has 
naturally  been  given  to  its  achievements.  From  out 
its  ranks  have  come  few  of  the  great  names  in  English 
literature. 

Among  these  the  name  of  Lord  Lytton,  or  Bulwer,  as 
he  is  more  generally  known  in  literature,  holds  a  promi- 
nent place.  For  the  period  of  a  long  hfe  he  lived  in  the 
world's  eye,  and  the  world  feels  a  great  interest  in  the 
character  of  the  man  as  well  as  in  his  writings. 

His  paternal  ancestors  had  been  settled  in  Norfolk 
since  the  Conquest.  The  name  of  Bulwer  attests  the 
Scandinavian  origin  of  the  Norman  soldier.  The  great- 
grandfather of  Edward  Bulwer  married  the  heiress  of  the 
Earles  of  Heydon  Hall,  which  became  the  family  resi- 
dence. Our  hero's  father  "  contracted  a  romantic,  if 
illicit,  attachment  to  a  young  person  of  great  beauty,  who 
eloped  with  him  from  a  boarding-school  in  which  she 
was  a  teacher,  and,  though  too  haughty  a  man  to  marry 
beneath  him,  he  had  at  least  the  justice  to  say  that  while 
she  lived  he  would  never  marry  any  one  else.  And  when 
the  hand  of  a  great  and  noble  heiress  was  offered  him. 


EDWARD   BULWER   LYTTON.  189 

although  a  very  ambitious  man,  he  refused  her  upon  the 
ground  that  he  was  not  quite  satisfied  with  the  shape  of 
her  ladyship's  nose."  General  Bulwer  built  for  his  mistress 
a  villa  in  the  neighborhood  of  London,  and  as  he  was 
driving  into  tlie  yard  on  his  return  from  some  military 
duties  which  had  detained  him  longer  than  usual,  she  ran 
out  to  meet  him.  In  this  hurried  action  she  received  a 
kick  from  one  of  the  horses,  and  died  of  the  injury. 

After  this,  the  General,  who  is  described  by  his  son  as 
being  of  a  very  powerful,  self-willed  nature,  wholly  uncul- 
tivated by  literature,  but  with  that  ability  for  action  which 
takes  lessons  from  life,  —  married  the  mother  of  our  hero, 
a  delicate  girl,  with  intelligent,  dark-blue  eyes,  with  shy 
sensitive  temper,  passionately  fond  of  poetry,  and  deeply 
under  the  influences  of  religion.  Her  family  was  as  ancient 
as  that  of  the  Bulwers,  the  Lyttons  having  intermarried 
with  many  houses  famous  in  history.  But  family  concord 
was  not  one  of  the  characteristics  of  the  Lytton  family, 
and  Bulwer's  grandfather  and  grandmother  had  lived 
stormily  together  for  a  few  years,  and  separated  by  mutual 
consent.  The  essential  faults  are  said  to  have  been  all 
on  the  side  of  the  grandfather.  The  only  daughter  of  the 
uncongenial  pair  was  not  permitted  to  dwell  permanently 
with  either.  She  was  sent  at  the  age  of  five  to  a  large 
school,  where  she  lived  a  sad  life  for  a  long  time,  without 
any  of  the  tender  care  and  affection  which  such  a  child 
craves,  and  must  have,  for  anything  like  a  healthful  child- 
life.  After  a  while  she  went  to  live  with  her  father,  and 
still  later  with  her  mother,  from  whose  house  she  was 
married  to  General  Bulwer.  He  was  not  a  man  who 
could  appreciate  the  rarer  qualities  of  Miss  Lytton.  He 
could  have  no  share  in  her  intellectual  life  and  no  sym- 
pathy with  her  religious  nature.  But  the  elegance  of  her 
manners  satisfied  his  pride,  her  domestic  habits  gave  him 
promise  of  a  peaceful  home,  and,  greatest  merit  of  all, 
her  features  suited  him.  He  liked  an  aquiline  nose.  A 
nose  that  turned  up  the  least  bit,  his  son  tells  us,  would 
have  disgusted  him  with  a  Venus.     The  lady's  nose  in 


190 


HOME  LIFE   OF  GREA  T  A  UTHORS. 


this  instance  proving  satisfactory,  a  happy  marriage  was 
anticipated,  although  the  bridegroom  had  buried  his  heart 
in  the  grave  of  a  mistress,  and  the  bride  had  but  partially 
recovered  from  an  unhappy  attachment  for  a  man  beneath 
herself  in  rank,  —  in  fact,  a  merchant's  son.  But  the  mar- 
riage proved  far  from  a  happy  one,  and  was  closed  after 
a  few  years  by  the  sudden  death  of  General  Bulwer.  Our 
hero  thus  writes  of  him  :  — 

"  Peace  to  thy  dust,  O  my  father  !  Faults  thou  hadst, 
but  those  rather  of  temper  than  of  heart,  —  of  deficient  edu- 
cation and  the  manhke  hardness  of  imperious  will  than  of 
ungenerous  disposition  or  epicurean  corruption.  If  thou 
didst  fail  to  give  happiness  to  the  woman  whom  thou  didst 
love,  many  a  good  man  is  guilty  of  a  similar  failure.  It  had 
been  otherwise,  I  verily  believe,  hadst  thou  chosen  a  partner 
of  intellectual  cultivation  more  akin  to  thine  own, —  of  hardier 
nerve  and  coarser  fibre,  —  one  whom  thy  wrath  would  less 
have  terrified,  whom  thy  converse  would  more  have  charmed; 
of  less  moral  spirit  and  more  physical  courage." 

Verily  we  are  tempted  to  ask  when  we  read  of  this 
marriage  —  as  well  as  of  the  son's  own  marriage  and  the 
marriages  of  many  other  members  of  the  English  aris- 
tocracy whose  domestic  lives  have  latterly  seen  the  light 
of  day  —  whether  less  of  moral  spirit  and  more  of  phys- 
ical courage  is  not  the  great  need  among  women  who 
aspire  to  the  peerage.  Strong  nerves  and  a  martial  spirit, 
if  they  could  not  secure  peace,  would  at  least  place  the 
combatants  upon  a  more  equal  footing,  and  the  world 
would  be  spared  the  spectacle  of  the  mild-mannered  and 
meek  bullied  by  the  overbearing  and  violent. 

As  for  Bulwer  himself,  he  had  the  hot  blood,  imperious 
temper,  and  remorseless  will  of  the  combined  Bulwers 
and  Lyttons ;  and,  it  must  be  added,  a  vanity  and  ego- 
tism so  boundless  as  to  be  peculiarly  his  own,  and  an 
arrogance  and  supercihousness  which  throughout  hfe  were 
a  constant  drawback,  and  which  interfered  materially  with 
the  acknowledgment  by  the  world  of  his  really  great 
powers. 


EDWARD  BU LIVER  LYTTON.  191 

At  the  early  age  of  seventeen  this  precocious  young 
man,  who  had  already  been  several  years  in  society,  felt 
his  first  sensations  of  love ;  and  he  talked  of  it  to  the 
end  of  his  days  as  being  the  one  genuine  passion  of  his 
life.  He  tells  the  pretty  story  very  feelingly,  and  no 
doubt  it  was  a  genuine  boyish  romance.     Hear  him  :  — 

*'  Ah,  God  !  how  palpably,  even  in  hours  the  least  friendly 
to  remembrance,  there  rises  before  me  when  I  close  my  eyes 
that  singularly  dwarfed  tree  which  overshadowed  the  little 
stream,  throwing  its  boughs  half-way  to  the  opposite  margin. 
I  dare  not  revisit  that  spot,  for  there  we  were  wont  to  meet 
(poor  children  that  we  were  !),  thinking  not  of  the  world  we 
had  scarce  entered,  dreaming  not  of  fate  and  chance,  full  only 
of  our  first-born,  our  ineffable  love.  It  was  so  unlike  the  love 
of  grown-up  people  ;  so  pure  that  not  one  wrong  thought 
ever  crossed  it,  and  yet  so  passionate  that  never  again  have 
I  felt  any  emotion  comparable  to  the  intensity  of  its  tumul- 
tuous tenderness." 

When  the  meetings  so  feelingly  described  became 
known  to  the  lady's  father,  she  was  sent  away  at  once, 
and  Bulwer  never  saw  her  again.  Very  soon  after,  she 
was  forced  into  a  marriage  against  which  her  heart  pro- 
tested. For  three  years  she  strove  to  smother  the  love 
which  consumed  her ;  and  when  she  sunk  under  the  con- 
flict, and  death  was  about  to  relieve  her,  she  wrote  to 
Bulwer  informing  him  of  the  sufferings  she  had  under- 
gone, affirming  her  deathless  love,  and  begging  him  to 
visit  her  grave. 

His  son  says  :  — 

"  The  impressions  left  on  my  father  by  this  early  phantom 
of  delight  were  indelible  and  colored  the  whole  of  his  after- 
life. He  believed  that  far  beyond  all  other  influences  they 
shaped  his  character,  and  they  never  ceased  to  haunt  his 
memory.  Allusions  to  it  are  constantly  recurring  in  all  his 
published  works,  and  in  none  of  them  more  than  in  the  last 
of  all.  He  was  much  affected  by  them,  and  not  knowing  to 
what  they  referred,  we  wondered  that  the  creations  of  his 
fancy  should  exercise  such  power  over  him.  They  were  not 
creadons  of  fancy,  but  the  memories  of  fifty  years  past." 


192  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

After  the  abrupt  end  of  his  first  romance  he  conceived 
a  sort  of  friendship  for  Lady  Carohne  Lamb,  which  came 
very  near  the  verge  of  love.  Lady  Caroline  was  between 
thirty  and  forty  years  old  at  this  time,  it  being  subsequent 
to  her  intrigue  with  Lord  Byron.  She  looked  much 
younger  than  her  age,  —  thanks,  perhaps,  to  a  slight 
rounded  figure  and  a  child-hke  mode  of  wearing  her 
pale  golden  hair  in  loose  curls.  She  had  large  hazel  eyes, 
good  teeth,  and  a  pleasant  laugh.  She  had  to  a  surpass- 
ing degree  the  qualities  that  charm,  and  never  failed  to 
please.  Her  conversation  was  remarkable,  and  she  was 
the  only  woman,  Byron  said,  who  never  bored  him.  She 
was  a  creature  of  caprice,  and  impulse,  and  whim,  and 
had  been  known  to  send  a  page  around  to  all  her  guests 
at  Brocket  at  three  o'clock  in  the  morning  to  say  that  she 
was  playing  the  great  organ  on  the  staircase,  and  re- 
quested the  pleasure  of  their  company.  And  it  is  added 
that  the  invitation  was  never  refused,  and  that  daylight 
would  find  them  listening,  spellbound  and  without  a 
thought  of  bed.  Here  is  Bulwer's  own  account  of  the 
close  of  this  little  episode  with  Lady  Caroline.  He  was 
staying  at  her  house,  and  had  become  very  jealous  of  a 
Mr.  Russell. 

"  I  went  downstairs.  Russell  sat  opposite  me.  He  wore 
a  ring.  It  was  one  which  Lord  Byron  had  given  Lady 
Caroline  :  one  which  was  to  be  worn  only  by  those  she 
loved.  I  had  often  worn  it  myself.  She  had  wanted  me 
to  accept  it,  but  I  would  not,  because  it  was  so  costly.  And 
now  he  wore  it.  Can  you  conceive  my  resentment,  my 
wretchedness  ?  After  dinner  I  threw  myself  upon  a  sofa. 
Music  was  playing.  Lady  Caroline  came  to  me.  '  Are  you 
mad  ? '  said  she.  I  looked  up.  The  tears  stood  in  my  eyes. 
I  could  not  have  spoken  a  word  for  the  world.  What  do 
you  think  she  said  aloud  t  '  Don't  play  this  melancholy  air, — 
it  affects  Mr.  Bulwer  so  that  he  is  actually  weeping.'  My 
tears,  my  softness,  my  love  were  over  in  a  moment.  When 
we  broke  up  in  the  evening  I  said  to  her,  '  Farewell  forever. 
It  is  over.  Now  I  see  you  in  your  true  light.  Instead  of 
jealousy  I  only  feel  contempt.     Farewell.     Go  and  be  happy." 


EDWARD  BULWER  LYTTON. 


193 


This  account  reads  very  much  like  a  page  from  "  Pelham  " 
or  "  Devereux,"  and  the  whole  account  of  his  affairs  of 
the  heart  is  written  in  a  similar  manner. 

All  this  had  passed  before  he  was  twenty-two.  At 
that  age  he  first  met  Rosina  Wheeler,  at  an  evening  party. 
He  was  talking  busily  to  his  mother  when  she  suddenly 
exclaimed  :  "  O  Edward,  what  a  singularly  beautiful  face  ! 
Do  look.     Who  can  she  be?" 

An  elderly  gentleman  was  leading  through  the  room 
in  which  they  sat  a  young  lady  of  remarkable  beauty, 
who,  from  the  simplicity  of  her  costume,  seemed  to  be 
unmarried.  He  turned  his  head  languidly,  as  he  says, 
with  a  strangely  troubled  sensation,  and  beheld  his  fate 
before  him,  —  in  other  words,  his  future  wife. 

Rosina  Wheeler  was  at  this  time  twenty-three,  and  in 
the  full  blossom  of  a  very  remarkable  beauty.  Her  father 
was  an  Irish  squire,  who  at  the  age  of  seventeen  had 
married  a  very  beautiful  girl  two  years  younger  than  him- 
self. The  natural  result  of  this  marriage  was  a  separation, 
after  the  birth  of  two  children,  one  of  them  the  future 
Lady  Lytton.  Domestic  infelicity  seems  to  have  been 
the  heritage  of  every  one  connected  with  the  Bulwer 
family  even  in  the  remotest  manner. 

And  now  it  appears  again  in  the  family  of  the  woman 
to  whom  the  latest  scion  of  the  old  house  is  to  be  united. 
Bulwer's  mother  opposed  the  match  strenuously  from  the 
first.  Her  pride,  her  prudence,  her  forebodings,  and  her 
motherly  susceptibilities  all  rose  up  against  it.  And  she 
never  gave  her  consent  to  it,  or  became  really  reconciled 
to  it  after  it  had  taken  place.  Although  very  unwilling  to 
displease  his  mother  in  so  vital  a  matter,  Bulwer  seems 
to  have  gone  steadily  on  to  such  a  consummation ;  not 
borne  away  certainly  by  strong  passion,  but  rather  influ- 
enced, it  would  seem,  by  a  tender  regard  for  the  feehngs 
of  Miss  Wheeler,  who  had  gro\vn  much  attached  to  him. 
Not  without  many  a  struggle  ^\ath  himself,  however,  did 
he  yield.  He  was  tenderly  attached  to  his  mother,  and 
it  was  a  great  grief  to  him  to  do  so  important  a  thing 

13 


194  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

without  her  approval ;  and,  moreover,  his  income  and  all 
his  worldly  prospects  depended  upon  her.  He  does  not 
seem  to  have  been  particularly  happy  over  his  own 
prospects,  for  in  one  of  the  last  letters  he  wrote  before 
marriage  he  says  :  — 

"  My  intended  is  very  beautiful,  very  clever,  very  good ; 
but,  alas  !  the  human  heart  is  inscrutable.  I  love  and  am 
loved.  My  heart  is  satisfied,  my  judgment,  too.  And  still 
I  am  wretched." 

There  have  been  published  within  a  few  years  a  great 
number  of  the  love-letters  written  by  Bulwer  to  Miss 
Wheeler  about  this  time.  His  son  pubhshes  none  of 
them  in  the  late  biography,  and  it  is  safe  to  say  that 
in  all  the  range  of  literature  there  are  no  other  letters 
filled  with  such  drivelling  idiocy  as  these.  Had  they 
been  written  by  some  Cockney  coachman  to  some  sen- 
timental housemaid,  they  should  stand  as  the  finest  speci- 
mens of  that  grade  of  literature  extant;  but  that  they 
should  have  been  written  by  one  of  the  foremost  literary 
men  of  his  time  is  a  marvel,  and  seems  to  show  to  what 
extremes  of  imbecihty  love  may  reduce  even  wise  men. 
As  for  Lady  Lytton  herself,  one  cares  to  know  Httle  more 
than  that  she  could  have  married  a  man  who  habitually 
addressed  her  as  his  "  sugar- plum,"  his  "  tootsy-wootsy," 
and  his  "  sweety-weety."  A  woman  clothed  and  in  her 
right  mind,  who  could  deliberately  accept  such  a  person- 
age for  a  life-long  companion,  calls  for  small  sympathy 
from  a  matter-of-fact  world,  unless,  indeed,  it  be  that  we 
bestow  our  sympathy  simply  upon  the  grounds  of  her 
feeble-mindedness. 

In  less  than  three  years  began  the  vulgar  quarrels 
which  finally  ended  the  marriage.  Bulwer  is  described  by 
a  visitor  to  the  house  about  this  time  as  appearing  "  like 
a  man  who  has  been  flayed  and  is  sore  all  over."  His 
temperament  was  by  nature  extremely  sensitive  and  irri- 
table. And  the  combined  Bulwer  and  Lytton  blood  was 
hot,  turbulent,  and  at  times  quite  uncontrollable.     There 


EDWARD  BULWER  LYTTON. 


195 


are  records  of  scenes  of  absolute  personal  violence  against 
his  wife,  and  one  instance  is  given  where  at  dinner, 
during  the  momentary  absence  of  the  servant,  he  bit  her 
cheek  till  the  blood  flowed  freely.  After  marriage,  his 
income  being  cut  off  by  his  mother,  he  for  a  time  wrote 
for  his  bread;  and  the  work,  close  and  confining  as  it 
was,  told  very  much  upon  his  health. 

"  His  feelings  became  morbidly  acute,  and  all  the  petty 
household  worries  were  to  his  exasperated  brain  what 
frictions  and  jostlings  are  to  highly  inflamed  flesh.  His 
wife  had  little  of  his  society.  He  was  nearly  always  writing 
or  making  preparation  for  writing,  and  when  they  were  to- 
gether his  nervous  irritability  vented  itself  at  every  unwel- 
come circumstance  in  complaints,  or  taunts,  or  fits  of  anger. 
To  harsh  words  and  unjust  reproaches  his  wife  returned 
meek  replies.  Any  distress  his  conduct  occasioned  her  she 
concealed  from  him.  She  was  studious  to  please  him,  and 
endeavored  to  anticipate  every  want  and  wish.  Her  gentle- 
ness and  forbearance  increased  his  gratitude  and  devotion 
to  her,  and  whenever  he  perceived  that  she  was  wounded  he 
was  full  of  remorse." 

So  says  her  son,  and  continues  :  — 

*'  The  mischief  was  aggravated  by  the  unfortunate  occur- 
rence that  my  mother  being  unable  to  suckle  her  first-born 
child,  it  had  been  nursed  out  of  the  house.  Her  maternal 
instinct,  thus  thwarted  in  its  origin,  never  revived.  The 
care  of  children  was  ever  after  distasteful  to  her.  Losing 
this  satisfaction  to  her  affections,  unless  she  had  company 
in  the  house  she  was  lonely.  As  it  was,  neither  of  them  saw 
the  issue  to  which  the  divided  life  was  tending." 

That  issue,  as  all  the  world  knows,  was  a  separation  of 
the  husband  and  wife,  and  a  life-long  quarrel  of  almost 
unimagined  bitterness.  No  wonder  that  Bulwer's  hand 
faltered  when  he  tried  to  write  of  it,  and  that,  having 
brought  his  autobiography  up  to  this  point,  he  laid  it  by, 
not  daring  to  go  on.  He  always  cherished  the  intention 
of  resuming  it,  but  could  never  bring  himself  to  the  point 
of  doing  so.     He  could  not  tell  the  story ;  but  Lady  Lytton 


1^6  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

could,  and  did,  continuing  to  do  so  till  her  dying  day. 
The  picture  of  her  which  her  son  has  given  does  not 
seem  like  that  of  a  woman  who  would  do  all  the  things 
which  she  notoriously  did.  But  doubtless  she  had  her 
amiable  and  engaging  side,  and  was  half  maddened  by 
her  wrongs.     Justin  McCarthy  says  :  — 

"  I  do  not  know  whether  I  ought  to  call  it  a  quarrel.  Can 
that  be  called  a  quarrel,  piteously  asks  the  man  in  ^Juvenal,' 
where  my  enemy  only  beats  and  I  am  beaten  ?  Can  that  be 
called  a  quarrel  in  which,  so  far  as  the  public  could  judge, 
the  wife  did  all  the  denunciation,  and  the  husband  made  no 
reply  ?  Lady  Lytton  wrote  novels  for  the  purpose  of  satiriz- 
ing her  husband  and  his  friends,  —  his  parasites,  she  called 
them.  Lady  Lytton  attributed  to  her  husband  the  most 
odious  meannesses,  vices,  and  cruelties ;  but  the  pubHc, 
with  all  its  love  of  scandal,  seems  to  have  steadfastly  refused 
to  take  her  ladyship's  word  for  these  accusations.  Dickens 
she  denounced  and  vilified  as  a  mere  parasite  and  sycophant 
of  her  husband.  Disraeli  she  caricatured  under  the  title  of 
Jericho  Jabber.  This  sort  of  thing  she  kept  always  going 
on.  Sometimes  she  issued  pamphlets  to  the  women  of  Eng- 
land, calling  on  them  to  take  up  her  quarrel,  which,  some- 
how, they  never  did.  Once,  when  Sir  Edward  was  on  the 
hustings  addressing  his  constituents  at  a  county  election, 
her  ladyship  suddenly  appeared,  mounted  the  platform,  and 
*went'  for  him.  I  do  not  know  anything  of  the  merits  of 
the  quarrel,  but  have  always  thought  that  something  like 
insanity  must  have  been  the  explanation  of  much  of  her 
conduct.  But  it  is  beyond  doubt  that  her  husband's  con- 
duct was  remarkable  for  its  quiet,  indomitable  patience  and 
dignity." 

Let  the  veil  drop  over  the  blighted  lives,  knowing  as 
we  do  that  the  human  heart  is  so  dark  and  intricate  a 
labyrinth  that  we  cannot  claim  to  understand  it  by  half 
knowledge,  and  that  however  we  might  judge  these  two 
with  any  light  which  we  can  possibly  have  in  our  day,  we 
should  be  in  danger  of  doing  each  a  grievous  wrong. 


ALFRED   TENNYSON. 


IT  is  related  by  Miss  Thackeray  that  the  grandfather  of 
Alfred  Tennyson,  when  that  poet  was  young,  asked 
him  to  write  an  elegy  on  his  grandmother,  who  had  re- 
cently died,  and  when  it  was  written  gave  him  ten  shil- 
lings, with  the  remark,  "  There,  that  is  the  first  money  you 
have  ever  earned  by  your  poetry,  and,  take  my  word  for 
it,  it  will  be  the  last."  How  little  he  foresaw  at  that  time 
the  fame  and  fortune  which  the  youth's  poetry  was  to 
bring  him,  and  the  lasting  honor  he  was  to  bestow  upon 
the  family  name  !  That  name  was  already  an  honorable 
one,  for  the  Tennysons  were  an  old  family,  and  had  good 
blood  in  their  veins.  The  home  was  the  old  rectory  of 
Somersby,  where  George  Clayton  Tennyson,  LL.D.,  held 
sway  in  the  old-time  priestly  fashion  for  a  lifetime.  He  is 
described  as  a  man  of  strong  character  and  high  principle, 
full  of  accomplishments,  and  gifted  withal;  a  strikingly 
handsome  man,  with  impressive  manners.  Twelve  chil- 
dren were  given  to  his  hands,  of  whom  Alfred  was  the 
third.  The  eldest,  Frederick,  and  the  second,  Charles, 
were  both  poets,  and  not  without  merit,  —  especially 
Charles,  who  published  a  volume  of  sonnets,  which  gave 
great  pleasure  to  so  good  a  judge  as  Coleridge  ;  and  the 
Laureate  is  himself  very  fond  of  his  brother's  work. 


198  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

The  children  led  a  very  free  and  unconstrained  life  in 
that  beautiful  part  of  Lincolnshire,  and  had  a  few  friends 
to  whom  they  attached  themselves  for  life.  Arthur  Hal- 
lam  was  Alfred's  intimate,  and  later  on  he  became  en- 
gaged to  one  of  his  sisters.  Young  Hallam's  early  death 
was  the  first  shadow  upon  their  lives.  But  who  would 
not  willingly  die  at  twenty-three  to  be  immortalized  in 
such  a  poem  as  "In  Memoriam  " ? 

Of  Arthur  Hallam's  own  quality  as  a  poet  we  get  a 
pleasant  glimpse  in  the  sonnet  addressed  to  his  betrothed 
when  he  began  to  teach  her  Italian  :  — 

"  Lady,  I  bid  thee  to  a  sunny  dome, 
Ringing  with  echoes  of  Italian  song  ; 
Henceforth  to  thee  these  magic  halls  belong, 
And  all  the  pleasant  place  is  like  a  home. 
Hark,  on  the  right,  with  full  piano  tone, 
Old  Dante's  voice  encircles  all  the  air ; 
Hark  yet  again,  like  flute-tones  mingling  rare 
Comes  the  keen  sweetness  of  Petrarca's  moan. 
Pass  thou  the  lintel  freely;  without  fear 
Feast  on  the  music.     I  do  better  know  thee 
Than  to  suspect  this  pleasure  thou  dost  owe  me 
Will  wrong  thy  gentle  spirit,  or  make  less  dear." 

After  Tennyson  had  made  his  first  literary  successes, 
and  after  the  family  life  at  Somersby  was  broken  up,  we 
next  hear  of  him  through  a  warm  and  life-long  friend. 
Away  back  in  1844  Carlyle  in  one  of  his  letters  to  Emer- 
son gives  the  following  description  of  the  then  young  and 
rising  poet.  It  is  an  authentic  glimpse  of  the  real  man, 
as  he  then  appeared  to  one  of  the  shrewdest  and  most 
critical  of  the  men  of  that  day. 

"  Tennyson  is  now  in  town,  and  means  to  come  and  see 
me.  Of  this  latter  result  I  shall  be  very  glad :  Alfred  is 
one  of  the  few  British  or  Foreign  Figures  (a  not  increasing 
number  I  think)  who  are  and  remain  beautiful  to  me,  —  a  true 
human  soul,  or  some  approximation  thereto,  to  whom  your 
own  soul  can  say,  Brother !  However,  I  doubt  he  will  not 
come;  he  often  skips  me,  in  these  brief  visits  to  Town;  skips 
everybody  indeed,  being  a  man  solitary  and  sad,  as  certain 
men  are,  dwelling  in  an  element  of  gloom,  —  carrying  a  bit  of 


ALFRED    TENNYSON.  199 

Chaos  about  him,  in  short,  which  he  is  manufacturing  into 
Cosmos  ! 

"  Alfred  is  the  son  of  a  Lincolnshire  Gentleman  Farmer,  I 
think ;  indeed,  you  see  in  his  verses  that  he  is  a  native  of 
'moated  granges,'  and  green  fat  pastures,  not  of  mountains 
and  their  torrents  and  storms.  He  had  his  breeding  at 
Cambridge,  as  if  for  the  Law  or  Church  ;  being  master  of  a 
small  annuity,  on  his  Father's  decease,  he  preferred  clubbing, 
with  his  mother  and  some  sisters,  to  live  unpromoted  and 
write  Poems.  In  this  way  he  lives  still,  now  here,  now  there  ; 
the  family  always  within  reach  of  London,  never  in  it;  he 
himself  making  rare  and  brief  visits,  lodging  in  some  old 
comrade's  rooms.  I  think  he  must  be  under  forty,  not  much 
under  it.  One  of  the  finest  looking  men  in  the  world.  A  great 
shock  of  rough  dusty-dark  hair  ;  bright,  laughing  hazel  eyes  ; 
massive  aquiline  face,  most  massive,  yet  most  delicate;  of 
sallow-brown  complexion,  almost  Indian  looking;  clothes 
cynically  loose,  free-and-easy ;  smokes  infinite  tobacco. 
His  voice  is  musical  metallic,  —  fit  for  loud  laughter  and 
piercing  wail,  and  all  that  may  lie  between  ;  speech  and 
speculation  free  and  plenteous  :  I  do  not  meet  in  these  de- 
cades such  company  over  a  pipe  !  We  shall  see  what  he 
will  grow  to.  He  is  often  unwell ;  very  chaotic  —  his  way  is 
through  Chaos  and  the  Bottomless  and  Pathless ;  not  handy 
for  making  out  many  miles  upon." 

To  this  graphic  description  little  need  be  added  of  the 
Tennyson  of  that  time.  He  was  in  the  midst  of  his  great- 
est literary  successes,  and  just  beginning  to  reap  some  of 
the  rewards  of  his  labors.  His  fame  increased  rapidly 
from  that  time  forward,  and  his  fortune  with  his  fame. 
For  many  years  he  has  been  a  rich  man,  being  a  sharp 
and  shrewd  manager  of  his  worldly  affairs.  His  invest- 
ments have  always  proved  to  be  paying  ones ;  and  for  a 
long  time  he  has  had  whatever  prices  he  named  for  his 
poems.  He  has  a  beautiful  place  at  Farringford,  Isle  of 
Wight,  and  another  country  seat  at  Aldworth,  in  Surrey. 
He  also  owns  a  house  in  London,  although  he  spends 
very  little  time  there.  He  kept  up  his  visits  to  the  Carlyles 
during  his  occasional  stays  in  the  metropolis,  until  the 
death  of  his  old  friends.     He  was  very  fond  of  Mrs. 


200  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS, 

Carlyle,  her  sharp  wit  amusmg  him,  and  her  appreciation 
of  his  own  work  flattering  him.  She  gives  occasional 
pleasant  mention  of  him  in  her  letters.  Over  his  later 
work  Carlyle  was  not  enthusiastic,  although  he  retained 
his  friendship  for  the  man.  In  1867,  after  the  death  of 
his  wife,  he  gives  us  his  last  gUmpse  of  the  poet,  which  is 
as  characteristic  as  the  other  :  — 

"  We  read  at  first  Tennyson's  '  Idyls,'  with  profound  rec- 
ognition of  the  finely  elaborated  execution,  and  also  of  the 
inward  perfection  of  vacancy  —  and,  to  say  truth,  with  consid- 
erable impatience  at  being  treated  so  very  like  infants  though 
the  lollipops  were  so  superlative.  We  gladly  changed  for 
one  Emerson's  '  EngHsh  Traits ;'  and  read  that  with  increas- 
ing and  ever  increasing  satisfaction  every  evening ;  blessing 
heaven  that  there  were  still  books  for  grown-up  people  too." 

According  to  Carlyle,  what  Tennyson  needed  was  a 
Task ;  and  wanting  that,  he  almost  lost  his  way  among 
the  will-o*-wisps.  High  art,  in  the  eyes  of  Carlyle,  was 
but  a  poor  "task"  for  a  man  like  Tennyson.  Upon  this 
point  the  world  will  not  be  likely  to  agree  with  him,  nor 
in  his  judgment  of  the  wonderful  "  Idyls  of  the  King." 
Although  Tennyson,  like  Carlyle  himself,  has  written  too 
far  into  the  shadows  of  age,  he  will  not  be  judged  by  the 
labors  of  his  old  age,  but  by  the  matchless  products  of  his 
prime.  These  are  surely  a  priceless  possession  for  the 
readers  of  the  future,  as  well  as  for  the  men  of  his  own 
time. 

In  the  autobiography  of  Sir  Henry  Taylor  we  have  this 
glimpse  of  the  poet,  in  a  letter  from  Mrs.  Cameron  to  that 
gentleman :  — 

"Alfred  has  grown,  he  says,  much  fonder  of  you  since 
your  last  visit  here.  He  says  he  feels  now  he  is  beginning 
to  know  you  and  not  to  feel  afraid  of  you  ;  and  that  he  is 
beginning  to  get  over  your  extreme  insolence  to  him  when 
he  was  young  and  you  were  in  your  meridian  splendor  and 
glory.  So  one  reads  your  simplicity.  He  was  very  violent 
with  the  girls  on  the  subject  of  the  rage  for  autographs.  He 
said  he  believed  every  crime  and  every  vice  in  the  world  was 


ALFRED    TENNYSON.  201 

connected  with  the  passion  for  autographs  and  anecdotes  and 
records ;  that  the  desiring  anecdotes  and  acquaintance  with 
the  lives  of  great  men  was  treating  them  liice  pigs,  to  be 
ripped  open  for  the  public  ;  that  he  knew  he  himself  should 
be  ripped  open  Hke  a  pig ;  that  he  thanked  God  Almighty 
with  his  whole  heart  and  soul  that  he  knew  nothing,  and  that 


All  of  which  sounds  not  unlike  what  Carlyle  himself 
might  have  said  in  those  days ;  and  yet  what  personal 
revelations  he  made  to  the  world  before  his  death  ! 

The  news  that  Lord  Tennyson  is  writing  his  autobiogra- 
phy may  be  sent  by  cable  almost  any  day  now,  and  the 
world  will  not  receive  it  with  any  great  surprise,  but  with 
very  great  interest  and  pleasure.  This  dislike  of  being 
lionized  and  overrun  by  celebrity  hunters  is  probably 
one  great  reason  why  the  poet  prefers  the  soHtude  of  the 
country  to  a  residence  in  London.  His  servants  and 
family  guard  him  very  securely  from  unwelcome  visitors 
in  his  country  home.  The  injunctions  against  disturbing 
him  while  at  his  work  are  so  strong,  that  one  day  during 
the  life  of  Prince  Albert  that  distinguished  attache  of  roy- 
alty was  refused  admittance  at  the  door.  The  poet 
formed  a  friendship  with  the  Prince,  however,  later  in  hfe, 
and  is  now  an  occasional  visitor  to  the  Queen  at  Windsor. 
He  is  also  a  favorite  with  the  Princess  of  Wales  and 
other  members  of  the  royal  family.  But  even  such  august 
friends  as  these  do  not  draw  him  often  from  his  solitude. 
Mr.  Gladstone  begs  him  in  vain  for  a  visit,  and  his  invita- 
tions to  the  houses  of  the  great  lords  are  of  course  many 
and  importunate ;  but  of  late  he  refuses  them  all.  He 
says  he  will  never  again  voluntarily  pass  a  week  in  London, 
and  he  is  not  more  fond  of  visits  to  country  houses  than 
to  the  city.  Nor  can  we  wonder  much  at  this.  He  has 
never  been  a  society  roan,  and  now  that  he  is  old,  and 
growing  somewhat  feeble,  the  effort  to  conform  to  the  de- 
mands of  a  conventional  life  is  harder  than  ever.  He 
tried  taking  a  house  in  London  and  spending  the  season 
there,  not  many  years  ago,  but  wearied  of  it  very  quickly, 


202 


HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 


and  gave  up  the  idea  forever.  While  in  London  at  that 
time  he  always  appeared  in  public  in  the  picturesque 
wide-awake  hat  of  the  Italian  bandit,  and  always,  even  in 
warm  weather,  wore  a  cloak.  The  costume  is  very  be- 
coming, and  the  poet  can  afford  to  indulge  his  individual 
tastes  in  the  matter  of  dress  \  so  everybody  said  how  poeti- 
cal he  looked,  and,  on  the  whole,  his  eccentricity  was  a 
success.  He  has  always  had  a  great  contempt  for  the 
conventionalities  of  dress,  and  many  laughable  anecdotes 
have  been  told  concerning  his  appearance  at  the  Isle  of 
Wight.  When  young  he  was  really  handsome,  though  he 
always  wore  his  hair  long,  and  looked  as  if  he  would  be 
the  better  for  a  barber;  but  now  he  is  very  gray  and 
wizened,  stoops  badly,  and  shows  that  he  has  smoked, 
as  Carlyle  said,  infinite  tobacco.  Tennyson  has  always 
exercised  a  judicious  hospitality,  but  never  overburdened 
himself  with  company.  His  favorite  time  for  guests  is 
from  Saturday  until  Monday,  and  those  who  are  so  fortu- 
nate as  to  be  invited  enjoy  very  greatly  the  distinction. 
Among  his  favorite  guests  is  Henry  Irving.  A  few  years 
before  his  death  Garibaldi  paid  the  poet  a  visit,  which  was 
much  enjoyed  by  both.  Years  ago,  when  the  poet  was 
more  in  London  than  now,  a  little  knot  of  literary  friends 
had  a  standing  engagement  to  dine  together  once  a  month, 
and  the  parties  were  almost  the  ideal  of  unconventional 
firiendliness.  Among  the  number  were  Carlyle,  Cunning- 
ham, Mill,  Thackeray,  Forster,  Stirling,  Landor,  and 
Macready.  Here  the  conversation  was  of  the  best,  Car- 
lyle always  coming  out  strong,  and  all  the  rest  content 
to  listen.  However,  Carlyle,  unlike  many  great  convers- 
ers,  never  monopolized  the  conversation.  It  was  always 
dialogue  and  not  monologue  with  Carlyle  in  any  mixed 
company,  though  he  would  discourse  at  length  to  one 
or  two  visitors.  Tennyson,  Hke  many  men  of  letters, 
loves  to  talk  about  his  own  work,  and  is  very  fond  of 
reading  his  poems  to  his  friends.  This  is,  of  course,  very 
dehghtful  to  those  friends,  if  the  reading  be  not  too  pro- 
longed, although  he  is  said  to  chant  them  in  rather  a  dis- 


ALFRED  TENNYSON.  203 

agreeable  manner.  He  is  a  great  egotist,  and  does  not 
like  to  listen  to  other  people  when  they  talk  about  them- 
selves. We  are  told  that  Charles  Sumner  once  paid  him 
a  visit,  and  bored  him  very  much  by  a  long  talk  upon 
American  affairs  in  which  Tennyson  took  no  interest. 
When  Sumner  finally  made  a  sufficient  pause,  Tennyson 
changed  the  subject  by  inquiring  if  his  visitor  had  ever 
read  "  The  Princess."  Sumner  repHed  that  it  was  one  of 
his  favorite  poems,  whereupon  Tennyson  handed  him  the 
book  and  asked  him  to  read.  Sumner  began,  but  was 
soon  stopped  by  Tennyson,  who  wished  to  show  him  how 
a  passage  should  be  read.  He  went  on  reading  aloud  in 
his  high  nasal  voice,  until  Sumner  grew  very  weary,  but 
did  not  dare  to  move  for  fear  of  being  thought  unappre- 
ciative.  On  and  on  read  the  poet,  page  after  page,  never 
making  a  moment's  pause  or  giving  Sumner  any  chance 
to  escape,  until  he  had  read  the  whole  poem.  It  is  said 
that  Sumner  never  dared  pay  him  another  visit.  Being  a 
decided  egotist  himself,  it  was  painfully  hard  for  the  dis- 
tinguished American  to  subordinate  himself  for  so  long  a 
time,  and  his  friends  amused  themselves  very  much  at  the 
idea. 

Tennyson  undoubtedly  has  a  high  opinion  of  his  work ; 
but  he  does  not  go  quite  to  the  length  of  Wordsworth  in 
such  self-admiration,  as  Wordsworth  would  read  no  poetry 
but  his  own,  while  Tennyson  is  a  generous  admirer  of  the 
work  of  fellow-poets. 

Tennyson's  married  life  has  been  one  of  the  happiest 
on  record.     He  addresses  his  wife  in  these  lines  :  — 

"  Dear,  near,  and  true —  no  truer  Time  himself 
Can  prove  you,  though  he  make  you  evermore 
Dearer  and  nearer." 

One  cannot  think,  when  he  witnesses  the  devotion  of  the 
poet  to  his  wife,  that  he  ever  regrets  the  "  Amy  shallow- 
hearted,"  the  "  x\my  mine  no  more,"  of  his  youth ;  and 
the  reader  certainly  cannot  regret  her,  if  it  is  really  to  her 
that  we  owe  "  Locksley  Hall."  Mrs.  Tennyson  has  been 
something  of  an  invalid,  and  the  poet  and  his  sons,  Hallam 


204  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

and  Lionel,  may  often  be  seen  wheeling  her  on  the  lawn 
at  Farringford.  Of  the  house  at  Farringford  Miss  Thacke- 
ray, who  is  an  old  friend  of  the  family,  as  was  her  father 
before  her,  tells  us  :  — 

•'  The  house  itself  seemed  like  a  charmed  palace,  with 
green  walls  without  and  speaking  walls  within.  There  hung 
Dante  with  his  solemn  nose  and  wreath  ;  Italy  gleamed  over 
the  doorways  ;  friends'  faces  lined  the  way;  books  filled  the 
shelves,  and  a  glow  of  crimson  was  everywhere ;  the  great 
oriel  window  in  the  drawing-room  was  full  of  green  and 
golden  leaves,  of  the  sound  of  birds,  and  of  the  distant  sea." 

She  continues  :  — 

"  I  first  knew  the  place  in  the  autumn,  but  perhaps  it  is 
even  more  beautiful  in  spring-time,  when  all  day  the  lark 
trills  high  overhead,  and  then  when  the  lark  has  flown  out  of 
our  hearing  the  thrushes  begin,  and  the  air  is  sweet  with 
scents  from  the  many  fragrant  shrubs.  The  woods  are  full  of 
anemones  and  primroses  ;  narcissus  grows  wild  in  the  lower 
fields  ;  a  lovely  creamy  stream  of  flowers  flows  along  the 
lanes,  and  lies  hidden  in  the  levels ;  hyacinth-pools  of  blue 
shme  in  the  woods  ;  and  then  with  a  later  burst  of  glory 
comes  the  gorse,  lighting  up  the  country  round  about,  and 
blazing  round  about  the  beacon  hill.  The  beacon  hill  stands 
behind  Farringford.  If  you  follow  the  little  wood  of  night- 
ingales and  thrushes,  and  follow  the  lane  where  the  black- 
thorn hedges  shine  in  spring-time  (lovely  dials  that  illuminate 
to  show  the  hour),  you  come  to  the  downs,  and  climbing 
their  smooth  steps  you  reach  *  Mr.  Tennyson's  Down,' 
where  the  beacon-staff"  stands  firm  upon  the  mound.  Then 
following  the  Ime  of  the  coast  you  come  at  last  to  the 
Needles,  and  may  look  down  upon  the  ridge  of  rocks  that 
rises  crisp,  sharp,  shining,  out  of  the  blue  wash  of  fierce 
delirious  waters." 

Since  Tennyson's  elevation  to  the  peerage  there  has 
been  an  infinite  amount  of  squibbing  at  his  expense,  and 
some  very  good  parodies  upon  his  poems  have  been  cir- 
culated. The  "  Pall  Mall  Gazette  "  parodies  "  Lady  Clara 
Vere  de  Vere  "  thus  :  — 


ALFRED   TENNYSON.  205 

"  Baron  Alfred  Vere  de  Vere, 

Of  me  you  win  no  new  renown  : 
You  thought  to  daze  the  country-folk 

And  cockneys  when  you  came  to  town. 
See  Wordsworth,  Shelley,  Cowper,  Burns, 

Withdraw  in  scorn,  and  sit  retired  ; 
The  last  of  some  six  hundred  earls 

Is  not  a  place  to  be  desired. 

"  Baron  Alfred  Vere  de  Vere, 

We  thought  you  proud  to  bear  your  name  ; 
Your  pride  is  yet  no  mate  for  ours, 

Too  proud  to  think  a  title  fame. 
We  had  the  genius  —  not  the  lord ; 

We  love  the  poet's  truer  charms, 
A  simple  singer  with  his  dreams 

Is  worth  a  hundred  coats-of-arms." 

And  SO  on  to  the  close  :  — 

"  Alfred,  Alfred  Vere  de  Vere, 

If  time  be  heavy  on  your  hands, 
Are  there  no  toilers  in  our  streets. 

Nor  any  poor  in  all  these  lands  ? 
Oh,  teach  the  weak  to  strive  and  hope ; 

Oh,  teach  the  great  to  help  the  low  •, 
Pray  Heaven  for  a  noble  heart. 

And  let  the  foolish  title  go." 

There  was  undoubtedly  much  disappointment  that  Ten- 
nyson did  not  refuse  the  title  bestowed  upon  him,  as  he  had 
previously  declined  to  be  knighted,  and  was  looked  upon 
as  something  of  a  liberal.  He  probably  was  this  when 
young;  judging  by  some  things  in  his  ^vritings  ;  but  he  is 
now  looked  upon  as  a  tory  of  the  tories. 

Tennyson  has  probably  received  higher  prices  for  his 
poems  than  any  other  poet.  When  he  was  paid  ten 
pounds  a  line  for  "  Sea  Dreams,"  it  was  considered  a 
fabulous  price ;  but  he  has  received  much  more  than 
that  since. 

During  his  long  literary  life  —  for  he  has  been  writing 
over  fifty  years  —  he  has  of  course  written  a  great  deal ; 
yet  he  is  very  slow  and  laborious  in  composition,  and 
spends  much  time  in  rewriting  and  polishing.  The  gar- 
den song  in  "  Maud  "  was  rewritten  fifty  times,  and  almost 
as  great  labor  has  been  given  to  other  famous  bits  of 


2o6  HOME  LIFE  OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

writing.  He  was  seventeen  years  in  writing  "  In  Memo- 
riam,"  and  he  brought  it  almost  to  perfection  of  finish  ;  but 
he  has  spent  laborious  years  upon  poems  which  are  com- 
parative failures.  After  the  inspiration  has  waned,  or  if 
the  inspiration  is  wanting  in  the  first  place,  the  pains  taken 
in  revision  go  for  little  in  the  making  of  a  poem  which  will 
live.  Given  the  inspiration,  and  the  labor  usually,  though 
not  always,  adds  to  its  chances  for  immortality.  Tennyson, 
with  all  his  fastidious  delicacy  in  writing,  is  a  robust,  manly 
man,  —  strong,  healthy,  active,  fond  of  out-of-door  life,  and 
not  greatly  given  to  study.  He  spends  whole  days  in  the 
open  air,  and  has  all  an  Englishman's  fondness  for  walk- 
ing. He  is  martial  in  spirit,  too,  and  rejoices  in  the  heroic 
deeds  of  his  countrymen.  He  can  write  a  spirited  war 
song,  as  he  proved  a  few  years  ago  when  he  thrilled  all 
England  with  the  lyric  :  — 

"  Form,  form,  riflemen,  form  ; 
Ready,  be  ready  to  meet  the  storm." 

On  the  whole,  Tennyson  must  be  said  to  have  had  a 
very  prosperous  and  well-ordered  life.  He  has  enjoyed 
more  of  the  blessings  of  this  world  than  almost  any  one 
of  his  famous  contemporaries ;  and  his  name  is  likely  to 
live  after  that  of  most  of  the  others  shall  have  passed 
away.  He  has  had  the  appreciation  and  the  applause 
of  all  of  the  great  men  of  his  time,  and  the  friendship  of 
such  as  he  desired ;  and  his  old  age  is  full  of  honor,  and 
ministered  unto  by  loving  and  faithful  hands.  May  it  still 
be  long  before  an  admiring  world  shall  read  at  the  end 
of  his  life's  story  the  words,  "  In  Memoriam,  Alfred 
Tennyson." 


NATHANIEL     HAWTHORNE. 


"/^^OME  to  Concord,"  wrote  Ellery  Channing  to  Haw- 
Vs^^  thorne  once  upon  a  time  ;  "  Emerson  is  away,  and 
nobody  here  to  bore  you,"  —  which  sentence  contains  a 
gentle  hint  to  the  posterity  of  the  two  most  distinguished 
men  of  letters  America  has  produced  that  even  the  mystic 
and  the  seer  sometimes  palled  upon  the  appetites  of  his 
personal  friends.  If  any  man  could  be  supposed  to  be  a 
hero  to  his  valet,  that  man  was  surely  Emerson ;  but  his 
gifted  neighbor  seems  not  to  have  had  any  strong  relish 
for  his  society.  Neither  did  Hawthorne  really  enjoy 
Thoreau,  who  would  seem  to  have  been  a  sufficiently 
original  person  to  have  interested  him,  merely  as  a  study 
of  character.  But  it  does  not  appear  that  Hawthorne  was 
ever  particularly  fond  of  the  society  of  men  of  letters,  even 
though  they  were  also  men  of  genius.  He  refused  to  go 
to  the  Saturday  Club  of  Authors,  but  would  play  cards 
with  sea-captains  in  the  smoking-room  of  his  boarding- 
house  in  Liverpool,  evening  after  evening.  Indeed,  he 
liked  the  piquant  flavor  of  what  is  commonly  called  low 
society,  when  he  required  any  society  outside  his  home, 
better  than  that  which  would  have  seemed  more  adapted 
to  his  taste.  We  mean  simply  by  this  the  society  of  back- 
woodsmen, sailors,  laborers,  and  old  hard-headed  farmers 
^     of  New  England  stock,  with  their  strong  provincial  dialect. 


2o8  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

Mr.  Emerson  himself  liked  the  raciness  of  tlie  conver- 
sation of  such  men,  and,  indeed,  we  think  almost  all  men 
of  genius  have  something  of  the  same  taste.  When  we 
read  what  Mrs.  Hawthorne  says  of  the  manner  of  con- 
versation between  her  husband  and  Emerson,  it  can 
scarcely  be  considered  remarkable  that  Hawthorne  should 
not  have  cared  to  confine  himself  to  the  society  of  the 
sage.     She  says,  speaking  of  Hawthorne  :  — 

''  Mr.  Emerson  delights  in  him  ;  he  talks  to  him  all  the 
time,  and  Mr.  Hawthorne  looks  answers.  He  seems  to  fas- 
cinate Emerson.  Whenever  he  comes  to  see  him  he  takes 
him  away,  so  that  no  one  may  interrupt  him  in  his  close  and 
dead-set  attack  upon  his  ear.'' 

There  is  a  one-sidedness  to  a  conversation  of  this  nature 
which  might  well  wear)-  a  person  in  the  body ;  and  only 
a  disembodied  spirit,  it  may  be  surmised,  could  thor- 
oughly enjoy  it.  \  fine  thing  to  do  would  be  to  put  two 
of  those  great  conversationahsts  against  each  other,  as  was 
sometimes  done  with  Sydney  Smith  and  Macaulay.  It  is 
said  that  the  two  would  sit  glaring  at  each  other  and  main- 
tain perfect  silence  ;  whereas  either  one  of  them  apart 
from  the  other  would  discourse  for  three  hours  without 
taking  breath.  Imagine  the  horrible  agony  of  those 
among  the  auditors  who  were  not  interested  in  the  sub- 
ject of  the  oration!  —  and  there  must  always  have  been 
some  among  the  number  so  situated. 

One  remembers  how  Shelley  got  rid  of  the  old  woman 
down  in  Conway,  and  wonders  why  the  ruse  was  never 
tried  upon  Macaulay  by  some  of  his  \-ictims.  Shelley,  it 
is  said,  was  once  riding  in  a  stage  in  that  region,  and 
the  only  passenger  beside  himself  was  an  old  woman 
with  t«-o  huge  baskets  filled  with  onions  and  cabbage 
respectively.  She  was  huge  herself  and  much  incumbered 
with  fat,  and  the  day  was  excessively  warm.  Shelley  was 
one  of  those  dehcate  mortals  who  have  been  kno^vn  to 
"  die  of  a  rose  in  aromatic  pains,"  and  after  a  while  the 
presence  of  the  old  woman  nearly  drove  him  to  distrac- 


NA  THANIEL  HA  WTHORNE. 


209 


tion.  He  pretended  that  it  had  quite  done  so,  and  sud- 
denly throwing  himself  into  the  bottom  of  the  stage  he 
glared  at  the  old  woman  and  shouted  :  — 

"  For  God's  sake  let  us  sit  upon  the  ground, 
And  tell  sad  stories  of  the  death  of  kings  : 
How  some  have  been  deposed,  some  slain  in  war, 
Some  haunted  by  the  ghosts  they  have  deposed, 
Some  poisoned  by  their  wives,  some  sleeping  killed, — 
All  murdered." 

Before  the  last  two  words  —  which  he  rendered  with 
more  than  an  actor's  effect  —  were  fairly  out  of  his  mouth, 
the  old  woman  by  her  shrieks  had  summoned  the  guard, 
and  was  released  from  the  company  of  the  madman. 
Shelley  was  often  induced  by  his  friends  to  show  them 
how  he  got  rid  of  the  old  woman,  and  the  exhibition 
always  called  for  uproarious  applause.  There  is  a  hint  in 
it  for  any  well-bred  company  who  may  be  bored  to  the 
point  of  extinction  by  a  distinguished  member.  The  only 
wonder  is  that  in  some  cases  the  sudden  madness  is  not 
real  rather  than  assumed. 

Hawthorne  was  eminently  capable  of  being  bored  to 
this  point  of  desperation,  and  his  mother  and  elder  sister 
saved  themselves  from  any  danger  of  this  kind  by  volun- 
tarily living  the  lives  of  recluses.  Julian  Hawthorne 
tells  us  :  — 

"  His  mother,  a  woman  of  fine  gifts  but  extreme  sensibiHty 
lost  her  husband  in  her  twenty-eighth  year  ;  and  from  an 
exaggerated,  almost  Hindoo-Hke,  construction  of  the  law  of 
seclusion  which  the  public  taste  of  that  day  imposed  upon 
widows,  she  withdrew  entirely  from  society  and  permitted  the 
habit  of  soHtude  to  grow  upon  her  to  such  a  degree  that  she 
actually  remained  a  strict  hermit  to  the  end  of  her  long  Hfe, 
or  for  more  than  forty  years  after  Captain  Hawthorne's  death. 
Such  behavior  on  the  mother's  part  could  not  fail  to  have  its 
effect  upon  the  children.  They  had  no  opportunity  to  know 
what  social  intercourse  meant ;  their  peculiarities  and  eccen- 
tricities were  at  least  negatively  encouraged  ;  they  grew  to  re- 
gard themselves  as  something  apart  from  the  general  world. 

14 


2IO  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

It  is  saying  much  for  the  sanity  and  healthfulness  of  the 
minds  of  these  three  children,  that  their  loneHness  distorted 
their  judgment  — their  perception  of  the  relation  of  things  — 
as  little  as  it  did." 

The  sister  is  described  as  having  in  many  respects  an 
intellect  as  commanding  and  penetrating  as  that  of  her 
brother,  and  yet  she  followed  in  the  way  of  her  mother 
and  passed  her  life  in  almost  complete  seclusion,  caring 
for  nothing  but  the  reading  of  books  and  the  taking  of 
long  walks,  sleeping  always  until  noon,  and  sitting  up  until 
two  or  three  o'clock  in  the  morning  in  perfect  solitude. 
She  boarded  for  many  years  after  her  mother's  death  at  a 
farm-house  on  the  seashore,  and  could  not  be  induced  to 
come  out,  even  to  attend  the  funeral  of  her  brother  at 
Concord,  although  he  was  her  pride  and  idol  throughout 
life. 

Had  Hawthorne  himself  been  less  fortunate  in  his  mar- 
riage, there  is  httle  doubt  that  his  o^\^l  pecuHarities  would 
have  become  exaggerated,  perhaps  even  to  the  extent  .of 
those  of  his  sister.  But  he  married  a  woman  who  both 
understood  and  appreciated  him,  and  w^hom  he  idoHzed. 
From  this  union  grew  all  the  happiness  and  success  of  his 
hfe.     His  son  says  :  — 

"  To  attempt  to  explain  and  describe  his  career  without 
taking  this  event  into  consideration  would  be  like  trying  to 
imagine  a  sun  without  heat  or  a  day  without  a  sun.  Nothing 
seems  less  likely  than  that  he  should  have  accomplished  his 
work  in  literature  independently  of  her  sympathy  and  com- 
panionship. Not  that  she  afforded  him  any  direct  and  literal 
assistance  in  the  composition  of  his  books  and  stories :  her 
gifts  were  wholly  unsuited  to  such  employment,  and  no  one 
apprehended  more  keenly  than  she  the  solitariness  and 
uniqueness  of  his  genius,  insomuch  that  she  would  have 
deemed  it  something  not  far  removed  from  profanation  to 
have  offered  to  advise  or  sway  him  in  regard  to  his  literary 
productions.  She  believed  in  his  inspiration,  and  her  office 
was  to  promote,  as  far  as  in  her  lay,  the  favorableness  of  the 
conditions  under  which  it  should  manifest  itself." 


NATHANIEL   HAWTHORNE.  211 

It  was  to  this  that  she  devoted  her  Hfe,  —  to  comfort, 
to  cheer,  to  soothe,  to  inspire,  to  guard  from  all  out- 
ward annoyances,  the  poetical  and  sensitive  man  who 
believed  in  her  so  implicitly  and  leaned  upon  her  so  con- 
fidently. They  led  a  very  quiet  and  secluded  life  during 
the  most  of  his  literary  career,  and  seemed  almost  to  re- 
sent any  intrusion  of  the  outside  world  upon  them,  not 
only  as  regarded  persons,  but  even  as  regarded  agitating 
questions  and  pressing  ideas. 

They  took  very  slight  interest  in  the  questions  which 
stirred  New  England  life  in  their  day,  and  held  entirely 
aloof  from  the  reforms  which  shook  the  social  Hfe  around 
them  from  centre  to  foundation-stone.  Indeed,  he  had  a 
deep-seated  dishke  to  the  genus  Reformer,  and  presented 
his  picture  of  the  whole  race  in  ''  HoUingsworth."  Per- 
haps he  had  known  some  individual  reformer  of  that 
odious  type,  and  out  of  this  grew  his  dislike  of  the  whole 
species.  At  any  rate,  the  men  —  of  whom  New  England 
was  full  at  that  time  —  who 

"  Blew  the  fiery  breath  of  storm 
Through  the  hoarse  trumpet  of  Reform  " 

never  received  much  aid  or  sympathy  from  Nathaniel 
Hawthorne  or  his  wife.  Nor  will  they,  apparently,  from 
his  son,  who  says  of  his  father,  "  He  was  not  a  teetotaler 
any  more  than  he  was  an  abolitionist  or  a  Thug." 

But  if  their  sympathies  did  not  go  out  very  widely  to 
the  outside  world,  there  was  the  most  perfect  sympathy 
and  companionship  in  the  home  life,  and  no  more  beauti- 
ful record  of  a  perfect  marriage  has  ever  been  made  than 
this  Hfe  of  the  Hawthornes  presents.  Yes,  it  was  a  happy 
life  they  led,  these  two  in  their  married  isolation,  despite 
poverty  and  obscurity  and  a  lack  of  appreciation  in  the 
early  time,  and  of  trial,  from  iU-health  and  other  causes, 
in  later  years.  He  lived  like  Carlyle,  a  good  deal  in  the 
shadows  of  his  famous  books,  and  was  sometimes  for  months 
in  the  possession  of  the  demon  of  composition.  While  com- 
posing "  The  Marble  Faun  "  he  thus  writes  in  a  letter : 


212  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

"  I  sternly  shut  myself  up,  and  come  to  close  grips  with 
the  romance  which  I  am  trying  to  tear  from  my  brain." 

He  was  always  discouraged  about  his  work,  and  needed 
a  deal  of  cheering  regarding  it.     He  says  in  one  place  : 

"  My  own  individual  taste  is  for  an  altogether  different 
class  of  books  from  what  I  write.  If  I  were  to  meet  with 
such  books  as  mine  by  another  writer,  I  do  not  believe  I 
should  be  able  to  get  through  with  them." 

And  again :  — 

"  I  will  try  to  write  a  more  genial  book,  but  the  Devil  him- 
self always  gets  into  my  inkstand,  and  I  can  only  get  him 
out  by  penfuls." 

Still  again :  — 

"  Heaven  sees  fit  to  visit  me  with  the  unshakable  convic- 
tion that  all  this  series  of  articles  is  good  for  nothing.  I 
don't  think  that  the  public  will  bear  with  much  more  of  this 
sort  of  thing." 

His  letters  are  often  full  of  this  moody  discouragement, 
though  lighted  up  always  by  some  gleams  of  his  humor. 
For  instance,  he  writes  to  Fields  :  — 

"  Do  make  some  inquiries  about  Portugal,  —  in  what  part 
of  the  world  it  lies,  and  whether  it  is  a  Kingdom,  an  Em- 
pire, or  a  RepubHc.  Also  the  expenses  of  living  there,  and 
whether  the  Minister  would  be  much  pestered  with  his  own 
countrymen." 

And  later,  when  he  was  in  Rome  :  — 

"  I  bitterly  detest  this  Rome,  and  shall  rejoice  to  bid  it 
adieu  forever ;  and  I  fully  acquiesce  in  all  the  mischief  and 
ruin  that  has  ever  happened  to  it  from  Nero's  conflagration 
downward.  In  fact,  I  wish  the  very  site  of  it  had  been 
obhterated  before  I  ever  saw  it." 

His  complaints  about  his  pens  are  really  very  amusing 
to  those  people  —  and  their  name  is  legion  —  who  have  had 


NATHANIEL   HAWTHORNE. 


213 


a   like  difficulty  in   pleasing  themselves.     He  writes  to 
Fields  :  — 

"  If  you  want  me  to  write  you  a  good  novel,  send  me  a 
good  pen ;  not  a  gold  one,  but  one  which  will  not  get  stiff 
and  rheumatic  the  moment  I  get  attached  to  it.  I  never  met 
with  a  good  pen  in  my  life." 

To  this  last  sentiment  we  think  that  a  great  multitude 
which  no  man  can  number  will  respond  Amen.  He  says 
of  them  again  :  — 

"  Nobody  ever  suffered  more  from  pens  than  I  have,  and 
I  am  glad  that  my  labor  with  the  abominable  little  tool  is 
drawing  to  a  close." 

In  private  conversation  he  enlivened  his  more  serious 
thoughts  often  with  vivid  surprises  of  expression;  and 
he  had  a  mild  way  of  making  a  severe  remark,  which 
reminded  Charlotte  Cushman  of  a  man  she  once  saw 
making  such  a  disturbance  in  the  gallery  of  a  theatre 
that  the  play  could  hardly  proceed.  Cries  of  "Throw 
him  over  ! "  arose  from  all  parts  of  the  house,  and  the 
noise  became  furious.  All  was  tumultuous  chaos  until  a 
sweet  and  gentle  female  voice  was  heard  in  the  pit,  when 
all  grew  silent  to  hear  :  — 

"  No,  I  pray  you,  my  friends,  don't  throw  him  over.  I 
beg  that  you  will  not  throw  him  over,  but  —  kill  him  where 
he  is  !  " 

It  was  only  in  the  company  of  intimate  personal 
friends,  from  whom  all  restraint  was  removed,  that 
Hawthorne  ever  indulged  in  his  natural  buoyancy  of 
spirits.  Among  them  he  occasionally  condescended  to 
uproarious  fun.  But  he  was  like  Dr.  Johnson,  who, 
when  indulging  in  a  scene  of  wild  hilarity,  suddenly 
exclaimed  to  his  friends,  as  Beau  Brummel  approached, 
"  Let  us  be  grave  ;  here  comes  a  fool."  If  there  was  the 
slightest  suspicion  of  there  being  a  fool  in  the  company 
Hawthorne  always  wore  his  armor.     The  pretentious  and 


214  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

transcendental  fools  he  hated  worst  of  all;  and  the 
young  man  who  had  no  taste  for  the  finite,  but  thought 
the  infinite  was  the  thing  for  him,  always  left  him  with  a 
feeling  as  of  asphyxia. 

Hawthorne's  atmosphere  was  really  unhealthy  for  tran- 
scendentahsts.  No  doubt  his  dislike  of  Margaret  Fuller 
arose  from  this  feeling  of  his  that  she  was  always  acting  a 
part,  always  straining  after  an  effect.  He  loved  simple, 
natural,  unaffected  people,  and  the  part  of  a  sibyl  was 
very  distasteful  to  him.  He  suspected  the  inspiration 
of  green  tea  in  much  that  Margaret  said,  and  very 
ungallantly  pronounced  her  a  humbug.  But  as  he  did 
this  only  upon  the  paper  of  his  own  private  diary,  with 
no  thought  of  it  ever  being  paraded  before  a  critical  and 
captious  world,  we  should  not  blame  him  too  severely. 
And  if  he  was  mistaken  in  what  he  wrote  concerning  her 
husDand  and  her  life  in  Rome,  as  seems  to  be  the  fact, 
no  doubt  he  was  deceived  by  gossip-loving  friends  in 
Rome  concerning  the  matter.  One  does  not  write  gratu- 
itous falsehoods  upon  the  pages  of  one's  private  note- 
book about  acquaintances,  as  a  general  rule.  If  he  had 
desired  to  injure  Margaret  he  would  have  put  his  sup- 
posed facts  in  a  different  place,  no  doubt,  and  not 
merely  written  them  in  a  moment  of  spleen  where  he 
never  expected  them  to  be  seen. 

The  publication  of  such  comment  as  this,  and  Carlyle's 
mention  of  Charles  Lamb  and  others,  seems  to  be  due 
entirely  to  the  total  depravity  of  literary  executors.  As 
George  Eliot  says,  it  is  like  uncovering  the  dead  Byron's 
club-foot,  when  he  had  been  so  sensitive  about  it  through 
life,  as  his  friend  Trelawny  boasts  that  he  did.  Margaret 
Fuller  was  a  large-brained,  big-hearted  woman,  but  that 
she  and  Hawthorne  could  not  thoroughly  fraternize  is  not 
a  strange  thing.  We  see  another  instance  of  such  lack  of 
appreciation  of  each  other's  qualities  in  Henry  James  and 
the  Bostonians  of  the  present  time.  Even  the  admirers 
of  the  Boston  type  get  a  little  quiet  amusement  from  his 
delicious  satire,  although  their  admiration  of  the  reformers 


NATHANIEL   HAWTHORNE.  215 

may  remain  unshaken.  That  the  world  has  got  a  little 
weary  of  the  mutual  admiration  of  the  Boston  coterie  is 
an  open  secret.  We  have  had  a  trifle  too  much  of 
it  from  the  day  of  Fields,  who  apparently  invented 
Hawthorne,  and  would  have  put  a  patent  upon  him  if 
possible,  down  to  the  present  era  of  worship  of  that  real 
hero,  Emerson,  who,  if  he  survives  the  laudations  of  his 
present  army  of  admirers,  may  well  hope  for  immortality. 

The  wife  of  Hawthorne  was  so  different  a  person  from 
the  noble  army  of  literary  and  artistic  women  who  are  so 
numerous  to-day,  but  who  in  his  time  had  just  begun 
to  assert  themselves,  that,  believing  her  to  be  the  per- 
fect flower  of  womanhood,  as  he  did,  he  could  scarcely 
be  expected  to  appreciate  the  Zenobias  of  that  or  of  the 
present  time. 

Mrs.  Hawthorne's  sister,  Elizabeth  Peabody,  was  one 
of  the  women  of  the  new  era,  and  has  spent  her  entire 
life  in  noble  efforts  to  improve  the  world  into  which  she 
was  born  ;  and  who  shall  say  whether  Mrs.  Hawthorne  or 
Miss  Peabody  was  the  higher  type  of  woman  ? 

If  we  were  obliged  to  compare  Mrs.  Hawthorne  with 
the  caricatures  of  the  strong-minded  woman  in  which  nov- 
elists so  delight,  —  those  "  housekeepers  by  the  \vrath  of 
God,"  —  like  Mrs.  Jellaby  and  similar  monstrosities,  then 
the  answer  would  not  be  hard.  We  could  all  cry,  Mrs. 
Hawthorne,  now  and  forever  !  But  when  we  compare 
her  to  the  strong-minded  women  like  George  Eliot,  per- 
fect wives,  perfect  home-makers,  perfectly  sympathetic 
and  loyal  comrades  of  their  husbands,  and  lacking  noth- 
ing of  womanly  softness  or  tenderness  with  all  their 
strength,  then  the  answer  is  not  so  simple.  But  doubt- 
less the  fact  that  God  created  both  types  may  be 
accepted  as  evidence  that  He  saw  uses  for  both,  and 
that  even  the  women  whom  He  made  "  fools  to  match 
the  men  "  are  not  without  their  purpose  in  the  economy 
of  the  universe. 

Such  thoughts  as  the  following  in  regard  to  her  hus- 
band, written  by  Mrs.  Hawthorne  after  eight  years  of  mar- 


2i6  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS 

riage,  sound  not  unlike  the  rhapsodies  of  George  Eliot 
concerning  Mr.  Lewes  :  — 

"  He  has  perfect  dominion  over  himself  in  every  respect, 
so  that  to  do  the  highest,  wisest,  lovehest  thing  is  not  the 
least  effort  to  him,  any  more  than  it  is  for  a  baby  to  be 
innocent.  It  is  his  spontaneous  act,  and  a  baby  is  not 
more  unconscious  of  its  innocence.  I  never  knew  such 
loftiness  so  simply  borne.  I  have  never  known  him  to 
stoop  from  it  in  the  most  trivial  household  matter  any  more 
than  in  the  larger  or  more  public  ones.  If  the  Hours  make 
out  to  reach  him  in  his  high  sphere  their  wings  are  very 
strong.  Happy,  happiest  is  the  wife  who  can  bear  such  and 
so  sincere  testimony  to  her  husband  after  eight  years'  inti- 
mate union.  Such  a  person  can  never  lose  the  prestige 
which  commands  and  fascinates.  I  cannot  possibly  con- 
ceive of  my  happiness,  but  in  a  kind  of  blissful  confusion 
live  on.  If  I  can  only  be  so  great,  so  high,  so  noble,  so 
sweet  as  he,  in  any  phase  of  my  being,  I  shall  be  glad.  I 
am  not  deluded  nor  mistaken,  as  the  angels  know  now,  and 
as  all  my  friends  will  know  in  open  vision." 

We  will  quote  but  this  one  passage  from  her  letters 
about  him,  though  the  Life  is  filled  with  similar  ones, 
and  will  give  but  one  of  his  love-letters  to  her,  and  that 
not  entire.     He  says  :  — 

^'  Sometimes  during  my  solitary  life  in  our  old  Salem  house 
it  seemed  to  me  as  if  I  had  only  life  enough  to  know  that  I 
was  not  alive,  for  I  had  no  wife  then  to  keep  my  heart  warm. 
But  at  length  you  were  revealed  to  me  in  the  shadow  of  a 
seclusion  as  deep  as  my  own.  I  drew  nearer  and  nearer  to 
you,  and  opened  my  heart  to  you,  and  you  came  to  me,  and 
will  remain  forever,  keeping  my  heart  warm,  and  renewing 
my  life  with  your  own.  You  only  have  taught  me  that  I 
have  a  heart ;  you  only  have  thrown  a  light  deep  downward 
and  upward  into  my  soul.  You  only  have  revealed  me  to 
myself,  for  without  your  aid  my  best  knowledge  of  myself 
would  have  been  merely  to  know  my  own  shadow  —  to  watch 
it  flickering  on  the  wall,  and  mistake  its  fantasies  for  my 
own  real  actions.  ...  If  the  whole  world  stood  between  us 
we  must  have  met ;  if  we  had  been  born  in  different  ages  we 
could  not  have  been  sundered !  " 


NATHANIEL   HAWTHORNE.  217 

What  was  poverty  and  obscurity  and  isolation  unto 
these  two  souls,  so  complete  in  each  other  that  nothing 
else  was  desired  ?  How  deep  a  lesson  might  the  young 
of  these  later  days,  who  hesitate  to  take  each  other  unless 
all  things  else  may  be  added  unto  them,  learn  from  this 
perfect  marriage  !  How  much,  too,  could  they  learn  from 
the  dignity  and  the  refinement  and  the  charm  of  that 
early  home,  where  all  was  so  simple,  so  humble,  and  yet 
so  rich  and  satisfying  !  Would  that  we  had  more  such 
homes  of  royal  poverty  in  these  days  of  vulgar  pretence 
and  showy  unreality.  More  homes  where  there  is  no 
shamefacedness  over  the  want  of  the  luxuries  of  their 
neighbors,  but  a  simple  content  with  what  it  is  possible  to 
have  honorably;  where  plain  living  is  a  religion,  and 
where  there  is  no  insatiable  longing  for  the  unattainable. 
The  worship  of  wealth,  the  feeling  that  there  is  no  other 
good  than  money,  is  one  of  the  most  degrading  features 
of  our  modern  life.  It  is  a  falsehood,  too.  There  is 
everything  good  in  the  world,  and  the  most  of  the  things 
which  are  best  in  life  can  be  had  with  but  a  little  money. 
No  man  is  poor  unless  he  feels  poor.  If  a  family  are 
willing  to  Hve  their  own  noble  life,  pitched  in  a  high  key, 
and  with  little  regard  for  what  their  neighbors  may  say 
and  think,  it  is  still  possible  to  be  happy  in  this  goodly 
world,  though  the  bank  account  may  be  small,  or  there 
be  no  bank  account  in  the  case.  The  Ways  and 
Means  Committee  of  which  Mrs.  Hawthorne  was  chair- 
man in  her  day  could  impart  a  world  of  wisdom  to  the 
fretful  and  ambitious  wives  of  a  generation  of  young  men 
now  upon  the  stage  of  action,  who  strive  so  hard  to  live 
like  the  people  who  have  wealth  at  their  command  that 
they  spoil  the  beautiful  homes  they  might  enjoy  by  an 
unceasing  strife  to  appear  to  live  better  than  they  can 
afford  to  do. 

When  Fortune  began  to  smile  upon  the  Hawthornes, 
after  the  immortal  "  Scarlet  Letter  "  had  been  written  and 
"  The  Blithedale  Romance  "  had  been  added  to  it,  they 
received  her  favors  with  thankful  hearts,  and  knew  how 


2i8  HOME   LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

to  spend  wisely  and  well  what  came  to  them.  But,  as 30 
often  happens,  it  does  not  appear  that  they  were  aiy 
happier  in  their  easier  circumstances  than  in  their  povert) ; 
probably  not  as  happy,  for  the  glamour  of  youth  was  gont, 
and  the  first  zest  of  being  had  become  dulled.  Ill  healt\, 
too,  had  come  upon  him,  once  so  strong  and  perfect  ii 
body ;  and  their  home  was  measurably  broken  up  afte- 
they  first  went  abroad.  The  days  at  the  Old  Manse  com 
prised  the  idyl  of  their  lives. 

Here  is  what  Hawthorne  himself  says  of  this  time  :  — 

"  My  wife  is  in  the  strictest  sense  my  sole  companion,  and 
I  need  no  other ;  there  is  no  vacancy  in  my  mind  any  more 
than  in  my  heart.  In  truth,  I  have  spent  so  many  years  in 
total  seclusion  from  all  human  society  that  it  is  no  wonder  if 
now  I  feel  all  my  desires  satisfied  by  this  sole  intercourse. 
But  she  has  come  to  me  from  the  midst  of  many  friends  and 
acquaintances  ;  yet  she  lives  from  day  to  day  in  this  solitude, 
seeing  nobody  but  myself  and  our  Molly,  while  the  snow  of 
our  avenue  is  untrodden  for  weeks  by  any  footstep  save  mine. 
Yet  she  is  always  cheerful.  Thank  God  that  I  suffice  for  her 
boundless  heart." 


And,  again,  to  her  he  writes  : 


"  Dear  Little  Wife,  —  After  finishing  my  record  in  the 
journal,  I  sat  a  long  time  in  grandmother's  chair  thinking  of 
many  things ;  but  the  thought  of  thee,  the  great  thought  of  thee, 
was  among  all  other  thoughts,  like  the  pervading  sunshine 
falling  through  the  boughs  and  branches  of  a  tree  and  ting- 
ing every  separate  leaf.  And  surely  thou  shouldst  not  have 
deserted  me  without  manufacturing  a  sufficient  quantity  of 
sunshine  to  last  till  thy  return.     Art  thou  not  ashamed  .?" 

Concord  was  never  the  same  to  them  after  their  return 
from  Rome.  The  shadow  of  the  coming  separation  was 
already  around  them.  He  writes,  after  the  appearance  of 
Longfellow's  poem  :  "  I,  too,  am  weary,  and  look  forward 
to  the  Wayside  Inn."  And,  spite  of  the  most  loving  minis- 
trations of  family  and  friends,  he  was  soon  brought  to  the 
rest  which  awaited  him  there.     None  could  really  regret 


NATHANIEL   HAWTHORNE. 


219 


that  he  had  found  the  peace  he  sought;  but  the  world 
seemed  more  thinly  populated  when  it  was  known  that 
the  hand  which  had  written  "The  Scarlet  Letter,"  "The 
House  of  the  Seven  Gables,"  and  "  The  Marble  Faun  " 
would  write  no  more.  "We  carried  him,"  said  Fields, 
"  through  the  blossoming  orchards  of  Concord,  and  laid 
him  down  under  a  group  of  pines  on  a  hill-side  overlook- 
ing historic  fields ;  the  unfinished  romance  which  had 
cost  him  such  anxiety  laid  upon  his  coffin."  And  there, 
upon  that  Concord  height  which  he  has  rendered  world- 
famous,  made  a  Delphian  vale  or  a  Mecca  to  so  many 
pilgrims  from  his  own  land  and  from  over  sea,  he  sleeps 
well.  There  the  sweet  spring  flowers  of  dear  old  New 
England  bloom  for  him ;  there  the  Mayflower  pierces 
the  melting  snow,  and  the  shy,  sweet  violet  gems  the  earli- 
est green  ;  there  the  dandelion  glows  in  golden  splendor, 
and  the  snowy  daisies  star  the  grass,  and  all  the  sweet 
succession  of  summer  flowers  troop  in  orderly  array,  until 
Autumn  waves  her  torch,  and  the  sumach  and  the  golden- 
rod  blaze  out  in  wild  magnificence,  and  the  blue-fringed 
gentian  hides  in  secret  coverts.  These  are  the  fitting 
decorations  of  that  grave.  Piled  marble  or  towering  gran- 
ite would  lie  too  heavy  on  the  heart  of  this  child  of  Nature. 
And  as  the  years  shall  pass,  still  will  the  humble  grave 
continue  to  be  visited.  "  Forgotten  "  will  never  be  writ- 
ten upon  the  tombstone  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  Still 
through  the  clear  brilliance  of  New  England  winter  nights 
will  the  stars  look  down  tenderly  upon  it.  Arcturus  will 
stand  guard  over  it,  golden-belted  Orion  will  send  down 
quivering  lances  of  light  to  illumine  it,  the  pomp  of  blaz- 
ing Jupiter  shall  envelop  it,  and  the  first  radiance  of  the 
dawn  shall  silver  its  sacred  slopes  forever. 


HENRY   W.   LONGFELLOW. 


IN  the  city  of  Portland,  that  "beautiful  town  that 
is  seated  by  the  sea,"  in  the  year  1807  Henry 
Wadsworth  Longfellow  was  born,  and  in  the  delightf^4' 
old  ancestral  home  there  he  passed  his  youth.  The 
house  had  been  his  mother's  home  since  early  child- 
hood ;  in  it  she  was  married,  and  in  it  passed  almost 
her  entire  life.  It  had  been  built  by  Mrs.  Longfellow's 
father.  General  Peleg  Wadsworth,  in  the  year  1784,  and  was 
one  of  the  finest  mansions  in  the  city  at  that  time,  stand- 
ing, not  as  now,  in  the  heart  of  the  city,  but  out  in  the 
open  fields.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Longfellow  passed  here  a 
long,  beautiful,  and  happy  life,  devotedly  attached  to 
each  other,  fond  and  proud  of  their  children,  and  -much 
given  to  good  works.  Mr.  Longfellow  was  a  man  of  con- 
sequence in  the  community,  much  honored  for  his  learn- 
ing and  ability,  and  much  esteemed  for  his  integrity,  his 
cordial  and  kind  manners,  and  his  generous  hospitality. 
He  had  graduated  at  Harvard  College  when  very  young, 
where  he  was  a  classmate  of  Dr.  Channing,  Judge  Story, 
and  other  distinguished  men,  and  much  esteemed  by 
them  for  the  same  qualities  which  made  him  popular  in 
after-Hfe.  He  was  regarded  as  one  of  the  purest  and 
most  high-minded  youths  who  had  at  that  time  honored 
the  college  and  been  honored  by  it.  Mrs.  Longfellow 
was  a  very  beautiful  woman,  fond  of  poetry  and  music, 
of  dancing  and  social  gayety,  and  a  profound   lover  of 


HENRY   W.   LONGFELLOW.  221 

Nature  in  all  her  varied  aspects.  She  was  a  tender  and 
faithful  wife  and  a  most  devoted  mother.  From  her  Mr. 
Longfellow  doubtless  inherited  his  poetic  temperament 
and  much  that  was  most  pleasing  in  his  disposition. 

Longfellow's  childhood  seems  to  have  been  a  very 
happy  one,  passed  in  this  beautiful  home,  with  such 
parents, jand  surrounded  by  a.  delightful  group  of  young 
friends.  He  was  very  fond  of  reverting  to  it,  and  all 
through  his  life  cherished  the  memory  of 

"  The  friendships  old,  and  t|;ie  early  loves  " 

which  used  to  come  back  to  him 

"  With  a  Sabbath  sound  as  of  doves 
In  quiet  neighborhoods." 

He  remembered,  too,  more  vividly  than  many  men  of 
mature  y^ars^ 

"  The  gleams  and  glooms  that  dart 
Across  the  school-boy's  brain  ; 
The  song  and  the  silence  in  the  heart 
That  in  part  are  prophecies  and  in  part 
4  Are  longings  wild  and  vain." 

When  only  fifteen  years  of  age  he  entered  Bowdoin 
College,  with  a  brother  two  years  older  than  himself,  and 
graduated  fourth  in  his  class  in  1825.  His  Commence- 
ment oration  was  upon  "The  Life  and  Writings  of 
Chatterton."  He  was  also  invited  to  deliver  a  poem  the 
day  after  Commencement,  ^  he  had  already  begun  to 
write  verses  which  had  been  printed  in  the  local  news- 
papers. Almost  immediately  after  his  graduation  he  was 
offered  a  professorship  in  the  college,  and  requested  to 
visit  Europe  to  prepare  himself  for  its  duties,  making 
further  studies  in  the  modern  languages  for  that  purpose. 

The  proposal  was  eagerly  accepted,  and  he  sailed  the 
following  spring  in  a  packet- ship  from  New  York.  The 
voyage  occupied  a  month,  and  was  a  remarkably  pleasant 
one,  thoroughly  enjoyed  by  the  young  traveller.  There  is 
nothing  remarkable  in  the  letters  he  wrote  home  during 


222  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

this  first  trip  to  Europe,  when  he  visited  France,  Spain, 
Germany,  Italy  (where  he  spent  a  year),  and  England. 
He  assumed  the  duties  of  his  professorship  immediately 
upon  his  return,  at  a  salar}'  of  one  thousand  dollars  a  year. 
He  was  ver}'  popular  with  the  students  from  the  first,  and 
became  quite  a  power  in  the  University.  At  this  time  he 
became  a  contributor  to  the  "North  American  Re\-iew," 
and  may  be  said  to  have  fairly  begun  his  literary  career. 
In  the  year  1831  he  was  married  to  Mary  Storer  Potter, 
a  young  lady  of  Portland,  to  whom  he  had  long  been 
attached.  She  was  one  of  the  famous  beauties  of  that 
town,  noted  for  its  beautiful  women,  and  a  member  of 
the  social  circle  in  which  the  Longfellows  moved.  The 
marriage  was  in  every  way  suitable,  and  pleasing  to  the 
friends  of  both  parties.  She  was  a  lady  highly  educated 
for  that  day,  and  possessed  of  a  mind  of  unusual  power. 
She  was  also  of  a  most  cheerful  and  amiable  disposition ; 
and  the  world  opened  very  brightly  before  the  young 
professor.  They  began  housekeeping  in  Brunswick  in 
a  house  still  standing  in  Federal  Street.  He  gives  this 
picture  of  a  morning  there  :  — 

'•  I  can  almost  fancy  myself  in  Spain,  the  morning  is  so 
soft  and  beautiful.  The  tessellated  shadow  of  the  honey- 
suckle lies  motionless  upon  my  study  floor,  as  if  it  were  a 
figure  in  the  carpet ;  and  through  the  open  window  comes 
the  fragrance  of  the  wild-brier  and  the  mock-orange.  The 
birds  are  carolling  in  the  trees,  and  their  shadows  flit  across 
the  window  as  they  dart  to  and  fro  in  the  sunshine  ;  while 
the  murmur  of  the  bee,  the  cooing  of  doves  from  the  eaves, 
and  the  whirring  of  a  little  humming-bird  that  has  its  nest  in 
the  honeysuckle,  send  up  a  sound  of  joy  to  meet  the  rising 
sun." 

Here  was  passed  a  very  busy  and  happy  period  of  Mr. 
Longfellow's  life.  He  was  young,  gifted,  fortunately  situ- 
ated, and  beloved,  and  as  yet  no  shadow  had  darkened 
his  life.  He  employed  his  leisure  in  wTiting  a  series  of 
sketches  of  travel  which  were  afterwards  published  as 
"  Outre-Mer,"  and  he  began  to  \^Tite  poetr\'  again  after 


HENRY   W.   LONGFELLOW. 


223 


an  interval  of  nearly  eight  years.  He  also  began  a  scrap- 
book  devoted  to  notices  of  his  writings,  which  he  christ- 
ened "  Puffs  and  Counter  Blasts,"  and  kept  for  the  greater 
part  of  his  life. 

He  passed  five  and  a  half  years  in  Brunswick,  perhaps 
the  happiest  years  of  his  life,  for  he  had  youth  and  health 
and  high  hope  at  this  time ;  and  then  he  began  to  long 
for  a  somewhat  wider  sphere.  Very  opportunely  came 
the  offer  of  a  professorship  in  Harvard  University,  which 
was  at  once  accepted,  in  April,  1835.  He  sailed  for 
Europe  to  make  himself  familiar  with  the  Scandinavian 
tongues  and  to  pass  some  further  time  in  Germany.  He 
was  accompanied  by  his  wife  and  two  of  her  young  lady 
friends.  .  They  remained  in  London  for  a  few  weeks, 
and  made  acquaintance  with  many  distinguished  peo- 
ple,—  among  others  the  Carlyles,  to  whom  they  had 
brought  an  introduction  from  Mr.  Emerson.  They  paid 
a  visit  to  the  seer  at  Chelsea,  of  which  Mrs.  Longfellow 
wrote  :  — 

"  Mr.  Carlyle  of  Craigenputtock  was  soon  after  announced, 
and  passed  a  half-hour  with  us  much  to  our  delight.  He  has 
very  unpolished  manners,  and  a  broad  Scottish  accent,  but 
such  fine  language  and  beautiful  thoughts  that  it  is  truly 
delightful  to  listen  to  him.  He  invited  us  to  take  tea  with 
them  at  Chelsea,  where  they  now  reside.  We  were  as  much 
charmed  with  Mrs.  C.  as  with  her  husband.  She  is  a  lovely 
woman  with  very  simple  and  pleasing  manners.  She  is 
also  very  talented  and  accomplished;  and  how  delightful 
it  is  to  see  such  modesty  combined  with  such  power  to 
please !" 

They  left  London  for  Copenhagen  and  Stockholm  in 
June,  and  were  much  dehghted  with  the  new  land  they 
visited.  To  read  in  the  pubUc  square  at  midnight;  to 
pass  through  groves  of  pine  and  fir  with  rose-colored 
cones ;  to  hear  the  watchman  call  from  the  church  tower 
four  times  toward  the  four  quarters  of  the  heaven,  "  Ho, 
watchmen,  ho  !  Twelve  the  clock  hath  stricken.  God 
keep  our  town  from  fire  and  brand,  and  enemy's  hand;" 


224  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

to  have  boys  and  girls  run  before  to  open  the  gates ; 
to  hear  the  peasants  cry,  "God  bless  you,"  when  you 
sneezed,  —  all  these  litde  things  gave  them  the  delight 
which  young  travellers  alone  can  experience. 

But  alas  !  that  delight  was  of  short  duration.  Mrs.  Long- 
fellow was  taken  sick  in  Amsterdam  in  October,  and  they 
were  detained  there  for  a  month.  She  seemed  to  recover, 
and  they  journeyed  on  to  Rotterdam,  where  she  fell  ill 
again  and  died  the  29th  of  November.  Her  husband 
wrote  of  her  that  "  she  closed  her  peaceful  hfe  by  a  still 
more  peaceful  death,  and  though  called  away  when  life 
was  brightest,  went  without  a  murmur  and  in  perfect  will- 
ingness to  the  bosom  of  her  God."  Mr.  Longfellow 
immediately  resumed  his  journey,  going  on  to  Dusseldorf 
and  from  there  to  Bonn.  He  took  a  carriage  and  jour- 
neyed along  the  banks  of  the  Rhine,  by  the  "  castled 
crag  of  Drachenfels  "  and  the  other  storied  places  of 
that  famous  river,  in  complete  silence,  though  with  a 
pleasant  companion  by  his  side.  They  visited  castles  and 
cathedrals,  and  wonderful  ruins,  and  some  of  the  most 
picturesque  points  of  that  picturesque  land,  but  in  a 
gloom  which  nothing  could  break  or  even  lighten.  So 
on  to  Heidelberg,  where  they  were  to  sojourn  for  a  time, 
and  where  Mr.  Longfellow  was  to  pursue  his  studies. 
Here  he  found  Mr.  Bryant,  whom  he  had  never  met,  but 
who  cheered  and  soothed  him  as  only  a  fellow-country- 
man and  a  man  like-minded  with  himself  could  have  done. 
Mr.  Bryant  did  not  remain  long  in  Heidelberg,  however, 
though  his  wife  and  daughters  stayed  through  the  winter 
and  continued  to  cheer  Mr.  Longfellow's  loneliness.  He 
made  work  his  chief  consoler,  however,  and  accomplished 
a  great  deal  in  the  line  of  his  chosen  career. 

Like  Paul  Fleming,  into  whose  story  he  wove  many  of 
the  experiences  of  this  part  of  his  life,  "  he  buried  him- 
self in  books,  in  old  dusty  books.  He  worked  his  way 
dihgently  through  the  ancient  poetic  lore  of  Germany 
into  the  bright  sunny  land  where  walk  the  modem  bards 
and  sing."     Into  the  Silent  Land  he  walked  with  Salisj 


HENRY   W.   LONGFELLOW.  225 

he  wept  with  the  melancholy  Werther,  or  laughed  with  the 
gentle  Meister ;  he  pondered  deeply  over  the  congenial 
Schiller,  but  delighted  most  of  all  in  Jean  Paul  the  Only, 
in  whose  prodigal  fancy  he  lost  for  a  time  the  memory 
of  his  sorrows.  But  ever  at  his  side,  as  he  walked  on  the 
banks  of  the  beautiful  Neckar  and  gazed  up  at  the  lofty 
mountains  which  surround  Heidelberg,  there  seemed  to 
walk  the  Being  Beauteous  who  had  whispered  with  her 
dying  breath,  "  I  will  be  with  you  and  watch  over  you." 
Many  years  afterwards  he  embalmed  the  memory  of  this 
young  and  beautiful  wife  in  the  poem  called  "  The  Foot- 
steps of  Angels."  The  summer  following  his  bereavement 
he  started  on  a  tour  through  Switzerland,  finding  at  the 
very  outset  of  that  journey  the  tablet  containing  the  in- 
scription which  he  made  the  motto  of  "  Hyperion"  and 
of  his  future  life  :  "  Look  not  mournfully  into  the  Past, 
it  comes  not  back  again ;  wisely  improve  the  Present,  it 
is  thine  j  go  forth  to  meet  the  shadowy  Future  without 
fear  and  with  a  manly  heart."  At  Interlachen  he  met 
Miss  Frances  Appleton,  and  in  the  pages  of  ''  Hyperion  " 
the  world  has  read  of  the  romance  which  followed  that 
meeting.  JWe  also  read,  in  the  journals  published  recently, 
some  re^rds  of  those  days.  Here  is  one  of  the  earliest :  — 

"  A  day  of  true  and  quiet  enjoyment,  travelling  from 
Thun  to  Entelbuch  on  our  way  to  Lucerne.  The  time  glided 
too  swiftly  away.  We  read  the  '  Genevieve  '  of  Coleridge, 
and  the  '  Christabel,'  and  many  scraps  of  song,  and  httle 
German  ballads  of  Uhland,  simple  and  strange.  At  noon 
we  stopped  at  Langnau,  and  walked  into  the  fields,  and  sat 
down  by  a  stream  of  pure  water  that  turned  a  mill ;  and  a 
little  girl  came  out  of  the  mill  and  brought  us  cherries ;  and 
the  shadow  of  the  trees  was  pleasant,  and  my  soul  was  filled 
with  peace  and  gladness." 

And  a  little  later  :  — 

"  Took  a  carriage  to  St.  Germain-en- Laye  to  see  the 
Fete  des  Layes.  The  day  was  pleasant,  with  shifting  clouds 
and  sunshine.     They  told  me  I  was  in  good  spirits.     It  was 

15 


226  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

the  surface  only,  stirred  by  the  passing  breeze  and  catching 
the  sunshine  of  the  moment.  I  have  often  observed,  amid 
a  chorus  of  a  hundred  voices  and  the  sound  of  a  hundred 
instruments,  amid  all  this  whirlwind  of  the  vexed  air,  that 
I  could  distinguish  the  melancholy  vibration  of  a  single 
string  touched  by  a  finger.  It  had  a  mournful,  sobbing 
sound.  Thus  amid  the  splendor  of  a  festival,  —  the  rushing 
crowd,  and  song,  and  sounds  of  gladness,  and  a  thousand 
mingling  emotions,  —  distinctly  audible  to  the  mind's  ear  are 
the  pulsations  of  some  melancholy  chord  of  the  heart,  touched 
by  the  finger  of  memory.  And  it  has  a  mournful,  sobbing 
sound." 

But  tearing  himself  away  from  the  sadness  of  the  old 
memory  and  the  fascination  of  the  new  presence  ahke, 
Mr.  Longfellow  returned  to  America  in  December,  1836, 
and  assumed  the  duties  of  his  professorship  at  Cambridge. 
Here  he  soon  formed  those  friendships  which  were  to 
him  a  life-long  blessing  and  dehght.  They  fall  naturally 
into  two  groups,  the  earlier  and  later,  though  some  of  the 
most  intimate  of  these  friendships  formed  in  youth  lasted 
until  near  the  close  of  Mr.  Longfellow's  life.  Among 
the  early  friends  were  George  W.  Greene,  with  whom 
he  corresponded  most  affectionately  for  many  years  ;  Mr. 
Samuel  Ward,  a  brother  of  Mrs.  Julia  Ward  Howe ; 
Professor  Felton ;  Hilliard,  Mr.  Sumner's  law  partner ; 
Cleveland,  a  scholar  living  at  ease  in  Brookline ;  Haw- 
thorne j  and  always  and  ever  Mr.  Sumner  himself.  Emer- 
son, also,  and  Prescott  were  his  friends,  but  not  so  intimate 
as  the  others.  Here  is  a  glimpse  of  the  author  of  that 
series  of  fascinating  histories,  since  so  popular,  in  a  letter 
to  Greene  :  — 

"  This  morning,  as  I  was  sitting  at  breakfast,  a  gentleman 
on  horseback  sent  up  word  that  I  should  come  down  to 
him.  It  was  Prescott,  author  of  '  Ferdinand  and  Isabella.' 
He  is  an  early  riser,  and  rides  about  the  country.  There 
on  his  horse  sat  the  great  author.  He  is  one  of  the  best 
fellows  in  the  world,  and  much  my  friend  ;  handsome  and 
forty  ;  a  great  diner-out ;  gentle,  companionable,  and  modest ; 
quite  astonished  to  find  himself  famous." 


HENRY  IV.   LONGFELLOW.  227 

Then  comes  a  glimpse  of  the  as  yet  unknown  author 
of  "The  Scarlet  Letter:"  — 

"  I  shall  see  Hawthorne  to-morrow.  He  lives  in  Salem, 
and  we  meet  and  sup  together  to-morrow  evening  at  the 
Tremont  House.  Your  health  shall  be  remembered.  He 
is  a  strange  owl;  a  very  peculiar  individual,  with  a  dash  of 
originality  about  him  very  pleasant  to  behold.  How  I  wish 
you  could  be  with  us !  Ach  !  my  beloved  friend,  when  I 
one  day  sit  with  you  in  Italy  again,  with  nothing  on  the 
snow-white  tablecloth  save  bread  still  whiter,  and  fruit,  and 
that  most  delicate  wine  '  in  beakers  full  of  the  warm  South,' 
will  we  pledge  the  happy  present  time  and  those  sorrows 
and  disappointments  which  are  our  schoolmasters.  Sumner 
is  the  nearest  and  warmest  thing  I  can  send  you.  When 
you  have  him  you  will  think  you  have  me,  he  can  tell  you 
so  much  of  me." 

To  this  early  group  were  added,  later  on,  Agassiz, 
Lowell,  Dana,  James  T.  Fields,  Norton,  Dr.  Holmes,  and 
others ;  but  those  mentioned  were  his  real  intimates 
throughout  life.  With  Emerson  he  maintained  a  calm 
and  admiring  friendship,  but  saw  less  of  him  than  of  the 
others.  Bryant  and  Whittier  and  George  W.  Curtis  he 
loved  and  admired,  but  they  were  more  distant  and  not 
his  every-day  companions.  Dr.  Samuel  G.  Howe  be- 
longed, if  not  exactly  to  the  earliest  group  of  friends, 
yet  among  friends  both  early  and  late.  These  men  are 
all  historic  now,  and  it  seems  strange  to  find  Longfellow 
writing  of  them  as  he  does  in  letters  and  journals.  For 
instance  :  — 

"  Also  Mr.  Emerson,  a  clergyman,  with  new  views  of  life, 
death,  and  immortality;  author  of  'Nature,'  and  friend  of 
Carlyle.  He  is  one  of  the  finest  lecturers  I  ever  heard,  with 
magnificent  passages  of  true  prose  poetry.  But  it  is  all 
dreamery,  after  all." 

Strange,  too,  to  find  Carlyle  writing  to  the  young 
poet  after  the  receipt  of  a  volume  of  his  poems,  before 
reading  them,  as  is  said  to  be  the  fashion  of  great  men 


228  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

when  they  wish  to  let  unknown  authors  down  easily  and 
gracefully  :  — 

•'About  the  same  time  there  came  an  indistinct  message 
that  a  copy  of  your  poems  had  been  left  for  me  at  Fraser 
the  bookseller's.  It  now  beckons  to  me  from  one  of  my 
shelves,  asking  always,  '  When  wilt  thou  have  a  cheerful, 
vacant  day  ? '  " 

Very  natural  it  seems,  though,  to  find  that  Carlyle  is 
already  writing  from  "  a  hideous  immeasurable  treadmill,  a 
smoky,  soul-confusing  Babylon,"  and  that  he  addresses 
"  only  one  prayer  to  the  heavens,  —  that  he  were  well  out 
of  it  before  it  takes  the  life  out  of  him." 

Pleasantest  and  strongest  perhaps  of  all  his  friendships 
was  that  for  Charles  Sumner,  who  was  lecturing  at  the  Law 
School  when  Mr.  Longfellow  first  came  to  Cambridge. 
Begun  when  both  were  young  men  just  launching  forth 
on  their  great  but  so  different  career,  it  continued  until 
death  separated  them,  without  a  shadow  of  estrangement 
or  disloyalty,  but  with  ever  increasing  ardor  of  affection. 
Sumner  was  inclined  to  literature  at  that  time,  and  indeed 
for  many  years  afterwards,  his  pohtical  career  being  rather 
forced  upon  him  by  the  stormy  times.  A  club  was  formed 
at  this  time,  called  the  "  Five  of  Clubs,"  consisting  of 
Longfellow,  Sumner,  Hilliard,  Cleveland,  and  Felton. 
They  read  and  criticised  each  other's  writings,  and  en- 
joyed a  hearty  social  intercourse.  Awhile  afterwards, 
when  they  began  to  speak  well  of  each  other's  articles  in 
the  reviews,  the  newspapers  gave  them  the  name  of  the 
"  Mutual  Admiration  Society."  Not  inapplicable,  prob- 
ably, but  applicable  to  the  hterary  men  of  all  time.  What 
is  the  great  literary  guild  anywhere  but  a  mutual  admira- 
tion society  ?  What  a  large  portion  of  our  best  literature 
would  be  blotted  out  if  what  one  great  writer  has  said  of 
another  should  be  destroyed !  Would  we  have  this  so  ? 
Nay,  verily  !  Certainly  there  was  no  lack  of  warm  admira- 
tion, and  warm  expression  of  it,  among  this  httle  group 
of  friends;  and  between  Sumner  and  Longfellow,  at  least, 


HENRY   W.   LONGFELLOW. 


229 


these  expressions  continued  throughout  life,  and  were 
heartily  sincere  to  the  last.  One  after  another  Long- 
fellow's poems  were  submitted  to  his  friends'  criticism, 
and  each  received  its  due  meed  of  praise  or  gentle  cen- 
sure. Mr.  Sumner's  speeches  were  received  by  Longfellow 
with  great  enthusiasm  always,  and  praised  heartily  and 
unreservedly.  Every  step  in  his  career  was  watched  with 
the  most  eager  interest  and  intense  sympathy.  It  is  one 
of  the  most  beautiful  friendships  on  record.  One  wonders 
in  reading  the  journal  what  Longfellow's  life  would  have 
been  without  these  constant  visits  and  letters  from  Sum- 
ner. Every  Sabbath  was  spent  by  the  statesman  at  the 
poet's  house,  when  the  former  was  in  the  vicinity  of 
Boston,  and  many  and  many  are  the  records  during  the 
week,  —  Sumner  to  dine,  Sumner  to  tea,  Sumner  to  pass 
the  night,  and  always  some  note  made  of  the  late  and 
pleasant  talk  the  pair  had  together.  When  Sumner  goes 
to  Washington  he  is  sadly  missed,  and  such  Httle  notes  as 
this  sent  after  him  in  tender  remembrance  :  — 

"  Your  farewell  note  came  safe  and  sad  ;  and  Sunday  no 
well-known  footstep  in  the  hall,  nor  sound  of  cane  laid  upon 
the  table.  We  ate  our  dinner  somewhat  silently  by  ourselves 
and  talked  of  you  far  off,  looking  at  your  empty  chair.  Away, 
phantoms  !  I  will  not  think  of  this  too  much  for  fear  that 
which  you  say  may  prove  truer  than  I  want  it  to  be.  Let  us 
not  prophesy  sadness." 

When  Sumner  was  expected  to  make  a  speech  all  were 
alert  at  Craigie  House,  and  often  his  friend  would  send 
him  some  such  greeting  as  this  :  — 

"  It  is  now  eleven  o'clock  of  the  forenoon,  and  you  have 
just  taken  your  seat  in  the  Senate  and  arranged  your  artillery 
to  bombard  Nebraska  !  We  listen  with  deepest  interest,  but 
shall  not  hear  the  report  of  your  guns  till  to-morrow,  you  are 
so  far  off.  If,  after  all,  the  enemy  prevails,  it  will  be  one 
dishonest  victory  more  in  the  history  of  the  world.  But  the 
enemy  will  not  prevail.  A  seeming  victory  will  be  a  real 
defeat." 

Then,  after  the  speech  was  read  :  — 


230  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

"  All  this  morning  of  my  birthday,  my  dear  Senator,  I  have 
devoted  to  your  speech  on  Nebraska,  which  came  by  the 
morning's  mail.  It  is  very  noble,  very  cogent,  very  eloquent, 
very  complete.  How  any  one  can  get  over  it  or  under  it  or 
through  it  or  round  it,  it  is  impossible  to  imagine." 

Then,  after  the  cowardly  and  fiendish  attack  upon  Sumner 
in  the  Senate  Chamber  :  — 

'■'■  I  have  no  words  to  write  you  about  this  savage  atroc- 
ity -,  only  enough  to  express  our  sorrow  and  sympathy  for 
yourself.  We  have  been  in  great  distress.  Owen  came  to 
tell  us  of  this  great  feat  of  arms  of  the  '  Southern  chivalry.' 
He  was  absolutely  sobbing.  I  was  much  reheved  on  seeing 
your  despatch  to  your  mother,  and  to  hear  that  George  was 
going  to  you  directly.  A  brave  and  noble  speech  you  made, 
never  to  die  out  of  the  memories  of  men." 

Then,  a  day  or  two  later  :  — 

"I  have  just  been  reading  again  your  speech.  It  is  the 
greatest  voice  on  the  greatest  subject  that  has  been  uttered 
since  we  became  a  nation.  No  matter  for  insults  —  we  feel 
them  with  you ;  no  matter  for  wounds  —  we  also  bleed  in 
them." 

But  in  the  days  of  which  we  are  writing,  all  these  stormy 
troublous  times  were  yet  far  in  the  future,  and  the  world 
looked  bright  and  pleasant  to  these  afterward  saddened 
friends.  The  acquaintance  with  Miss  Appleton  had  been 
renewed  after  her  return  to  Boston,  and  the  poet  was  by 
this  time  deeply  devoted  to  her,  and  hopeful  of  one  day 
winning  her  for  his  own.  He  became  something  of  a 
dandy  in  those  days,  and  showed  a  fondness  for  color  in 
coats,  waistcoats,  and  neckties ;  and  the  ladies  looked  at 
him  a  little  doubtfully,  thinking  perhaps,  as  they  had  done 
of  Paul  Fleming,  that  "  his  gloves  were  a  shade  too  light 
for  a  strictly  virtuous  man."  Six  years  passed  after  the 
first  meeting  with  Miss  Appleton  in  Europe  before  Mr. 
Longfellow  finally  claimed  her  for  his  bride.  He  had 
been  a  patient  as  well  as  an  ardent  lover,  and  was  re- 
warded in  1 843  by  the  hand  of  her  he  sought.     She  was 


HENRY  W.  LONGFELLOW.  231 

now  a  woman  of  twenty-five,  of  stately  presence,  cultivated 
mind,  and  calm  but  gracious  manners.  Her  face  was  not 
"  faultily  faultless  "  nor  "  icily  regular,"  but  both  beautiful 
and  expressive.  Mr.  Longfellow  was  now  thirty-six  years 
old,  and  a  man  of  rapidly  widening  fame.  Mr.  Apple  ton 
purchased  for  the  newly  married  couple  the  old  Craigie 
House  in  Cambridge,  which  had  been  Mr.  Longfellow's 
home  ever  since  his  arrival  there.  Most  visitors  to  Cam- 
bridge are  familiar  with  this  old  Colonial  mansion  which 
had  once  been  the  headquarters  of  General  Washington. 
It  stands  far  back  in  the  ample  grounds  which  surround 
it,  and  is  painted  in  yellow  and  white.  It  is  on  Brattle 
Street  as  one  goes  from  Harvard  College  to  Mount 
Auburn.  The  front  is  about  eighty  feet  in  length,  in- 
cluding the  verandas,  and  a  wooden  railing  extends  around 
the  roof.  There  is  an  Italian  balustrade  along  the 
first  terrace,  and  a  hedge  of  lilacs  leads  up  to  the  door. 
Old  historic  elms  throw  their  broad  arms  all  about  the 
place.  The  interior  of  the  house  is  very  handsome,  and 
is  considered  a  fine  specimen  of  the  old  Colonial  style. 
Altogether  it  made  a  most  delightful  home  for  the  poet 
and  his  bride,  and  there  they  spent  the  remainder  of  their 
lives. 

About  the  time  of  his  marriage  Mr.  Longfellow's  eyes 
failed  him  on  account  of  overstraining  them,  and  one  of 
Mrs.  Longfellow's  first  wifely  duties  was  to  furnish  eyes 
for  her  husband.  She  read  to  him  and  wrote  for  him  a 
great  deal  for  several  years,  and  the  close  companionship 
which  this  required  was  very  pleasant  to  both.  He  was  a 
very  busy  man  in  those  days  ;  for,  contrary  to  the  popular 
impression,  Mr.  Longfellow  did  a  great  deal  of  hard  work 
at  the  college  for  a  good  many  years.  His  was  no  hon- 
orary position,  but  a  genuine  working  professorship,  involv- 
ing the  preparation  of  a  great  number  of  lectures  during 
each  year  and  close  class-work  besides.  He  enjoyed 
this  work  very  much  for  the  first  few  years,  but  long  before 
he  resigned  his  position  it  became  exceedingly  burden- 
some to  him.     The  college  should  have  relieved  him  of 


232 


HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 


the  drudgery  of  his  professorship,  and  allowed  him  time 
for  the  preparation  of  special  lectures  upon  really  scholarly 
themes  ;  but  it  had  riot  the  wisdom  to  do  so,  and  exacted 
the  labors  of  a  dray-horse  from  this  chained  Pegasus.  In 
the  journal  are  many  entries  like  the  following :  — 

"  I  seriously  think  of  resigning  my  professorship.  My 
time  is  so  fully  taken  up  by  its  lectures  and  other  duties 
that  I  have  none  left  for  writing.  Then  my  eyes  are  suffer- 
ing, and  the  years  are  precious  ;  and  if  I  wish  to  do  any- 
thing in  literature  it  must  be  done  now.  Few  men  have 
written  good  poetry  after  fifty." 

Again  :  — 

"  I  get  very  tired  of  the  routine  of  this  life.  The  bright 
autumn  weather  draws  me  away  from  study,  and  the  brown 
branches  of  the  leafless  trees  are  more  beautiful  than  books. 
We  lead  but  one  life  here  on  earth.  We  must  make  that 
beautiful.  And  to  do  this,  health  and  elasticity  of  mind  are 
needful,  and  whatever  endangers  or  impedes  these  must  be 
avoided." 

And  again  :  — ■ 

"  The  day  of  rest  —  the  '  truce  of  God  '  between  contend- 
ing cares  —  is  over,  and  the  world  begins  again  to  swing  round 
with  clash  and  clang,  like  the  wings  of  a  windmill.  Grind, 
grind,  grind." 

Some  hint  of  real  work  may  be  found  in  this  :  — 

"  The  seventy  lectures  to  which  I  am  doomed  next  year 
hang  over  me  hke  a  dark  curtain.  Seventy  lectures  !  who 
will  have  the  patience  to  hear  them  ?  If  my  eyes  were  strong 
I  should  delight  in  it.  But  it  will  eat  up  a  whole  year,  and 
I  was  just  beginning  so  cheerily  on  my  poem  and  looking 
forward  to  pleasant  work  on  it  next  year." 

Oh,  the  pity  of  it !  Many  men  could  have  lectured  to 
college  boys  on  the  modern  languages  and  literature,  if 
not  as  well  as  Longfellow,  at  least  well  enough  ;  but  who 
was  there  who  could  write  his  poems  ?    That  he  should 


HENRY   W.   LONGFELLOW.  233 

drudge  on  through  his  best  years,  giving  only  the  odds 
and  ends  of  his  time  to  his  real  life-work,  seems  an  in- 
finite pity.  What  might  he  not  have  done  in  those  earlier 
years  could  he  have  gone  fresh  and  untired  to  his  musings 
and  his  dreams? 

Emerson  was  wiser  than  he,  when  early  in  life  he  re- 
solved to  be  content  with  the  most  modest  means  and  to 
have  possession  of  himself.  He  never  drudged  in  a  pro- 
fession, but  gave  his  full  strength  to  his  literary  work. 
Longfellow  should  have  done  this  at  least  ten  years  before 
he  did.  But  five  children  had  come  into  the  family  during 
the  years  of  his  last  marriage,  and  poetry  has  not  long  been 
a  paying  investment  in  this  country,  although  Longfellow 
in  the  later  years  received  large  sums  for  his  work.  He 
probably  dropped  his  college  work  as  soon  as  he  felt  that 
he  could  afford  to  do  so ;  and  after  that,  much  of  his  im- 
portant work  was  done.  But  it  was  not  done  with  the 
buoyancy  and  freshness  which  the  earlier  years  might  have 
furnished,  although  some  of  his  best  poems  were  written 
after  the  change. 

But  the  last  twenty  years  of  Mr.  Longfellow's  life  were 
saddened  inexpressibly  by  the  loss  of  his  wife,  and  all 
his  later  work  is  of  a  sombre  hue,  filled  through  and 
through,  unconsciously,  with  his  own  sadness.  Uncon- 
sciously we  say,  for  he  never  intentionally  rhymed  his 
own  sorrows.  There  is  no  personal  mention  of  his  griefs 
in  all  his  later  poems.  The  death  of  his  wife  occurred  on 
the  9th  of  July  in  1861,  and  was  caused  by  burns  re- 
ceived from  having  her  clothing  ignited  by  a  match  upon 
which  she  trod  in  their  library,  where  she  had  been  seal- 
ing up  some  packages  of  the  children's  curls,  which  she 
had  just  cut.  Mr.  Longfellow  was  badly  burned  in  trying 
to  save  her,  and  when  the  funeral  took  place  was  confined 
to  his  bed.  She  was  buried  upon  the  anniversary  of  her 
marriage-day,  and  was  crowned  with  a  wreath  of  orange 
blossoms.  She  was  long  remembered  in  Cambridge  as 
the  most  beautiful  woman  of  her  time,  —  beautiful  not 
alone  in  body,  but  in  spirit  and  life.     Mr.  Longfellow  never 


2  34  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS, 

recovered  from  the  tragedy,  but  mourned  her  in  silence 
for  twenty  years.  Heart-breaking  are  the  entries  in  the 
journal  during  all  this  time,  —  entries  teUing  at  frequent 
intervals  of  his  ever  increasing  desolation.  Little  was 
known  of  all  this  by  the  world  until  the  publication  of  his 
journal,  for  it  was  one  of  the  peculiarities  of  his  grief  that 
he  could  speak  of  it  to  no  one.  Only  after  months  had 
passed  did  he  allude  to  it  in  his  letters  even  to  his  brothers, 
and  then  in  the  briefest  fashion  :  "  And  now  of  what  we 
both  are  thinking  I  can  write  no  word.  God's  will  be 
done."  The  first  entry  in  the  journal  after  the  break 
made  at  the  time  of  her  death  is  this  :  — 

"Sleep  sweetly,  tender  heart,  in  peace  ! 
Sleep,  holy  spirit,  blessed  soul ! 
While  the  stars  burn,  the  moons  increase, 
And  the  great  ages  onward  roll." 

The  entries  in  the  journal  are  all  brief,  but  they  are 
frequent   and  like  these  :    "  Walk  before  breakfast  with 

E and  afterward  alone.      The  country  is  beautiful, 

but  oh,  how  sad  !  How  can  I  live  any  longer  !  "  "  The 
glimmer  of  golden  leaves  in  the  sunshine ;  the  lilac  hedge 
shot  with  the  crimson  creeper ;  the  river  writing  its  silver 
S  in  the  meadow ;  everything  without  full  of  loveliness. 
But  within  me  the  hunger,  the  famine  of  the  heart!" 
"Another  walk  under  the  pines,  in  the  bright  morning 
sunshine." 

"  Known  and  unknown ;  human,  divine : 
Sweet  human  hand  and  lip  and  eye  ; 
Dear  heavenly  friend,  who  canst  not  die  : 
Mine,  mine  forever;  ever  mine." 

*'  How  inexpressibly  sad  are  all  holydays !  But  the 
dear  little  girls  had  their  Christmas-tree  last  night,  and 
an  unseen  presence  blessed  the  scene  ! " 

No  mention  of  his  loss  was  ever  made  in  his  published 
verse,  though  the  whole  of  his  poetry  was  much  sadder 
after  that   loss ;    but  after  his  own  death   the   following 


HENRY   W.   LONGFELLOW.  235 

poem  was  found  in  his  desk,  written  eighteen  years  after 
his  wife's  death  :  — 

"  In  the  long,  sleepless  watches  of  the  night 
A  gentle  face  —  the  face  of  one  long  dead  — 
Looks  at  me  from  the  wall,  where  round  its  head 
The  night  lamp  casts  a  halo  of  pale  light. 
Here  in  this  room  she  died,  and  soul  more  white 
Never  through  martyrdom  of  fire  was  led 
To  its  repose;  nor  can  in  books  be  read 
The  legend  of  a  life  more  benedight. 
There  is  a  mountain  in  the  distant  West 
That,  sun-defying  in  its  deep  ravines, 
Displays  a  cross  of  snow  upon  its  side : 
Such  is  the  cross  I  wear  upon  my  breast 
These  eighteen  years,  through  all  the  clianging  scenes 
And  seasons  changeless  since  the  day  she  died." 

It  was  a  long  time  before  he  could  work  again.  When 
he  felt  that  he  could  do  so,  he  began  his  translation  of 
Dante,  and  frequendy  produced  a  canto  in  a  day,  find- 
ing in  this  absorbing  occupation  the  first  alleviation  of  his 
sorrow.     In  a  sonnet  "  On  Translating  Dante,"  he  said  :  — 

"  I  enter  here  from  day  to  day. 
And  leave  my  burden  at  this  minster  gate." 

But  when  his  work  was  done  he  always  found  that  his 
burden  was  still  awaiting  him  on  the  outside,  and  he  took 
it  up  and  bore  it  as  patiently  as  he  could.  But  he  began 
earnestly  to  long  for 

**  The  Wayside  Inn, 
Where  toil  should  cease  and  rest  begin," 

and  to  feel  that  the  approach  of  old  age  without  the  be- 
loved companionship  was  hard  indeed  to  contemplate. 
But  his  children  were  beautiful  and  promising  and  affec- 
tionate, and  he  a  most  loving  and  conscientious  father ; 
so  they  gradually  came  to  occupy  his  thoughts  and  much 
to  cheer  his  solitude.  He  was  a  famous  man  too  by  this 
time,  indeed  long  before ;  and  the  world  made  demands 
upon  him  which  could  not  always  be  disregarded,  and  he 


236  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

began  to  mingle  with  it  somewhat  again.  But  the  little 
group  of  friends  to  whom  allusion  has  been  made  were 
his  best  comforters,  and  were  more  and  more  prized  as 
the  years  went  on.  During  the  translation  of  Dante  they 
assembled  at  very  short  intervals  to  hsten  to  the  reading 
of  the  work,  and  to  criticise,  and  suggest  such  changes  as 
were  deemed  advisable ;  and  these  occasions  were  much 
enjoyed.  As  the  years  went  by,  one  after  another  of  the 
early  friends  fell  by  the  way,  leaving  gaps  in  his  life  which 
could  never  be  filled.  Felton  was  the  first  to  go,  and  he 
was  very  deeply  mourned  by  Longfellow,  who  felt  ''as  if 
the  world  were  reeling  and  sinking  under  his  feet."  His 
death  made,  as  his  friend  expressed  it,  *'a  chasm  which 
not  only  nothing  can  fill  up,  but  which  nothing  has  a  ten- 
dency to  fill  up."  Hawthorne  and  Agassiz  followed  soon 
after  Felton;  and  later  Charles  Sumner,  most  deeply 
mourned  of  all.  He  said,  in  allusion  to  these  friends,  in 
one  of  his  most  beautiful  sonnets  :  — 

"  I  also  wait !  but  they  will  come  no  more, 
Those  friends  of  mine,  whose  presence  satisfied 
The  thirst  and  hunger  of  my  heart.     Ah  me  ! 
They  have  forgotten  the  pathway  to  my  door  ! 
Something  is  gone  from  Nature  since  they  died, 
And  summer  is  not  summer,  nor  can  be." 

Mr.  Longfellow  made  a  final  visit  to  Europe  in  1868, 
accompanied  by  his  children,  two  sisters,  and  a  brother, 
and  his  brother-in-law  Thomas  Appleton.  This  journey 
was  much  enjoyed  by  all,  although  Mr.  Longfellow  was 
not  a  very  good  sight-seer,  and  impatient  of  delays.  The 
remainder  of  his  life  passed  placidly  at  his  old  home,  and 
he  died  at  the  age  of  seventy-five,  in  the  midst  of  his 
family  and  friends.  Upon  his  cofiin  they  placed  a  palm- 
branch  and  a  spray  of  passion-flower,  —  symbols  of  vic- 
tory and  the  glory  of  suffering;  and  he  was  buried  at. 
Mount  Auburn,  beside  her  he  had  so  long  mourn^^ 
What  his  work  was  we  may  tell  in  the  eloquent  words 
of  his  brother  poet  and  most  appreciative  critic,  Mr. 
Stedman :  — 


HENRY  W.  LONGFELLOW. 


237 


"His  song  was  a  household  service,  the  ritual  of  our 
feastings  and  mournings;  and  often  it  rehearsed  for  us  the 
tales  of  many  lands,  or,  best  of  all,  the  legends  of  our  own. 
I  see  him,  a  silver-haired  minstrel,  touching  melodious  keys, 
playing  and  singing  in  the  twilight,  within  sound  of  the  rote 
of  the  sea.  There  he  lingers  late  ;  the  curfew-bell  has  tolled 
and  the  darkness  closes  round,  till  at  last  that  tender  voice 
is  silent,  and  he  softly  moves  unto  his  rest." 


JOHN   G.   WHITTIER. 

THE  poet  Whittier  always  calls  to  mind  the  prophet- 
bards  of  the  olden  time.  There  is  much  of  the  old 
Semitic  fire  about  him,  and  ethical  and  religious  subjects 
seem  to  occupy  his  entire  mind.  Like  his  own  Tauler,  he 
walks  abroad,  constantly 

"  Pondering  the  solemn  Miracle  of  Life; 
As  one  who,  wandering  in  a  starless  night, 
Feels  momently  the  jar  of  unseen  waves, 
^nd  hears  the  thunder  of  an  unknown  sea 
Breaking  along  an  unimagined  shore." 

His  poems  are  so  thoroughly  imbued  with  this  relig- 
ious spirit  that  they  seem  to  us  almost  Hke  the  sacred 
writings  of  the  different  times  and  nations  of  the  world. 
They  come  to  the  lips  upon  all  occasions  of  deep  feeling 
almost  as  naturally  as  the  Scriptures  do.  They  are  cur- 
rent coin  with  reformers  the  world  over.  They  are  the 
Alpha  and  Omega  of  deep,  strong  religious  faith.  Whoever 
would  best  express  his  entire  confidence  in  the  triumph  of 
the  right,  and  his  rehance  upon  God's  power  against  the 
devices  of  men,  finds  the  words  of  Whittier  upon  his  hps ; 
and  to  those  who  mourn  and  seek  for  consolation,  how 
naturally  and  involuntarily  come  back  lines  from  his  poems 
they  have  long  treasured,  but  which  perhaps  never  had 
a  personal  application  until  now !  To  the  wronged,  the 
down-trodden,  and  the  suffering  they  appeal  as  strongly 


JOHN  G.    WHITTIER.  239 

as  the  Psalms  of  David.  He  is  the  great  High  Priest  of 
Literature.  But  few  priests  at  any  time  have  had  such  an 
audience  and  such  influence  as  he.  The  moral  and  re- 
ligious value  of  his  work  can  scarcely  be  overstated.  Who 
can  ever  estimate  the  power  which  his  strong  words  had 
in  the  days  that  are  now  but  a  fading  memory,  —  in  the 
great  conflict  which  freed  the  bodies  of  so  many  million 
slaves  ?  And  who  can  ever  estimate  the  power  his  strong 
words  have  had  throughout  his  whole  career  in  freeing  the 
minds  of  other  millions  from  the  shackles  of  unworthy  old 
beliefs?  His  blows  have  been  strong,  steady,  persistent. 
He  has  never  had  the  fear  of  man  before  his  eyes.  No 
man  has  done  more  for  freedom,  fellowship,  and  character 
in  religion  than  he.  Hypocrisy  and  falsehood  and  cant 
have  been  his  dearest  foes,  and  he  has  ridden  at  them 
early  and  late  with  his  lance  poised  and  his  steed  at  full 
tilt.  Indeed,  for  a  Quaker,  Mr.  Whittier  must  be  said  to 
have  a  great  deal  of  the  martial  spirit.  The  fiery,  fighting 
zeal  of  the  old  reformers  is  in  his  blood.  You  can  imagine 
him  as  upon  occasion  enjoying  the  imprecatory  Psalms. 
In  his  anti-slavery  poems  there  is  a  depth  of  passionate 
earnestness  which  shows  that  he  could  have  gone  to  the 
stake  for  his  opinions  had  he  lived  in  an  earlier  age  than 
ours.  That  he  did  risk  his  life  for  them,  even  in  our  own 
day,  is  well  knowTi.  During  the  intense  heat  of  the  anti- 
slavery  conflict  he  was  mobbed  once  and  again  by  excited 
crowds;  but  he  was  not  to  be  intimidated  by  all  the 
powers  of  evil,  and  continued  to  speak  his  strong  words 
and  to  sing  his  inspiring  songs,  whether  men  would  hear 
or  whether  they  would  forbear.  And  those  Voices  of 
Freedom,  whatever  may  be  thought  of  them  by  mere 
critics  and  litterateurs,  will  outlast  any  poems  of  their  day, 
and  sound  "  down  the  ringing  grooves  of  Time  "  when 
much  that  is  now  honored  has  been  forgotten.  He  will 
be  known  as  the  Poet  of  a  great  Cause,  the  Bard  of  Free- 
dom, as  long  as  the  great  anti-slavery  conflict  is  remem- 
bered. He  is  a  part,  and  an  important  part,  of  the  history 
of  his  country,  a  central  figure  in  the  battalions  of  the 


240 


HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 


brave.  Those  wild,  stirring  bugle-calls  of  his  cheered  the 
little  army,  and  held  it  together  many  a  time  when  the 
cause  was  only  a  forlorn  hope  ;  and  they  came  with  their 
stern  defiance  into  the  camp  of  the  enemy  with  such 
masterful  power  that  some  gallant  enemies  deserted  to  his 
side.  They  were  afraid  to  be  found  fighting  against  God, 
as  Whittier  had  convinced  them  they  were  doing.  There 
is  the  roll  of  drums  and  the  clash  of  spears  in  these  stirring 
strains ;  there  are  echoes  from  Thermopylae  and  Mara- 
thon, and  the  breath  of  the  old  Greek  heroes  is  in  the 
air ;  there  is  a  hint  of  the  old  Border  battle-cries  from 
Scotland's  hills  and  tarns  ;  from  Jura's  rocky  wall  we  can 
catch  the  cheers  of  Tell ;  and  the  voice  of  Cromwell  can 
often  be  distinguished  in  the  strain. 

There  is  also  the  sweep  of  the  winds  through  the  pine 
woods,  and  the  mountain  blasts  of  New  England,  and  the 
strong  fresh  breath  of  the  salt  sea ;  all  tonic  influences, 
in  short,  which  braced  up  the  minds  of  the  men  of  those 
days  to  a  fixed  and  heroic  purpose,  from  which  they  never 
receded  until  their  end  was  achieved.  It  has  become  the 
fashion  in  these  days  of  dilettanteism  to  say  that  earnest- 
ness and  moral  purpose  have  no  place  in  poetry,  and 
small  critics  have  arisen  who  claim  that  Mr.  Whittier  has 
been  spoiled  as  a  poet  by  his  moral  teachings.  To  these 
critics  it  is  only  necessary  to  point  to  the  estimation  in 
which  Mr.  Whittiefs  poetry  is  held  by  the  world,  and  to 
the  daily  widening  of  his  popularity  among  scholars  and 
men  of  letters  as  well  as  among  the  people,  to  teach 
them  that  this  ruined  poetry  is  likely  to  live  when  all  the 
merely  pretty  poetry  they  so  much  admire  is  forgotten 
forever.  The  small  poets  who  are  afraid  of  touching  a 
moral  question  for  fear  of  ruining  their  poems  would  do 
well  to  compare  Poe,  who  is  the  leader  of  their  school 
and  its  best  exponent,  with  Mr.  Whittier,  and  to  ask  them- 
selves which  is  the  more  likely  to  survive  the  test  of  time. 
Let  them  also  ponder  the  words  of  Principal  Shairp,  one 
of  the  finest  critics  of  the  day,  when  he  says  of  the  true 
mission  of  the  poet,  that  "  it  is  to  awaken  men  to  the 


JOHN  G.    WHITTIER.  241 

divine  side  of  things  ;  to  bear  witness  to  the  beauty  that 
clothes  the  outer  world,  the  nobility  that  lies  hid,  often 
obscured,  in  human  souls  ;  to  call  forth  sympathy  for 
neglected  truths,  for  noble  and  oppressed  persons,  for 
down-trodden  causes ;  and  to  make  men  feel  that  through 
all  outward  beauty  and  all  pure  inward  affection  God 
himself  is  addressing  them."  They  would  do  well  also  to 
ponder  the  words  of  Ruskin,  who  believes  that  only  in  as 
far  as  it  has  a  distinct  moral  purpose  is  any  literary  work 
of  value  to  the  world.  Is  not  the  opinion  of  such  men  as 
these  to  be  considered  of  weight  in  this  matter?  And  is 
it  not  an  impertinence  in  little  men  like  some  of  those 
who  have  lately  WTitten  of  Mr.  Whittier,  to  speak  in  a 
patronizing  and  supercilious  tone  of  his  work,  as  if  the 
very  qualities  which  distinguish  it  from  the  work  of  the 
weaklings  had  ruined  it  as  poetry? 

It  is  perhaps  to  Mr.  Whittier's  ancestry  that  we  may 
trace  this  intense  consecration  of  life  to  all  its  higher  pur- 
poses ;  for  he  came  of  a  people  who  had  endured  persecu- 
tion for  conscience'  sake  for  generations,  and  who  had 
loved  liberty  with  a  love  passing  that  of  woman,  and  sac- 
rificed much  for  her  sake.  The  depths  of  feeling  which 
Mr.  Whittier  has  always  sounded  when  the  persecutions 
of  the  Quakers  have  risen  before  his  vision  can  only  be 
understood  by  those  who  are  thoroughly  familiar  with  the 
details  of  these  persecutions,  and  who  know  the  harmless 
character  of  the  men  and  women  thus  outraged.  Mr. 
Whittier  knows  this  well,  and  it  stirs  his  blood  to  this  day, 
as  it  stirred  the  blood  of  his  father  and  mother  when  they 
recounted  these  things  to  his  childish  ears.  Though  so 
much  deep  feeling  was  latent  in  their  natures,  the  out- 
ward lives  of  his  parents  were  serene  and  calm.  Mr. 
Whittier  has,  in  that  exquisite  little  idyl  "  Snowbound," 
given  us  a  graphic  and  authentic  picture  of  his  childhood's 
home,  and  in  a  measure  of  the  life  lived  there.  It  is  a 
quiet  little  New  England  interior,  painted  by  a  master's 
hand  from  love  of  his  work.  It  is  every  whit  as  delight- 
ful as  "  The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night ;  "  and  it  is  realisti- 

16 


242  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

cally  true   in   every  detail.     Here   we   have   the   family 
portraits  drawn  to  life,  —  the  father,  who 

"  Rode  again  his  ride 
On  Memphremagog's  wooded  side  ; 
Sat  dovm  again  to  moose  and  samp 
In  trapper's  hut  and  Indian  camp ; 
Lived  o'er  the  old  idyllic  ease 
Beneath  St.  Francois'  hemlock  trees ; " 


and  showed  how 


The  mother, 


The  uncle, 


"Again  for  him  the  moonlight  shone 
On  Norman  cap  and  bodiced  zone  ; 
Again  he  heard  the  violin  play 
Which  led  the  village  dance  away, 
And  mingled  in  its  merry  whirl 
The  grandam  and  the  laughing  girl." 


"  While  she  turned  her  wheel 
Or  run  the  new-knit  stocking-heel, 
Told  how  the  Indian  hordes  came  down 
At  midnight  on  Cocheco  town. 
And  how  her  own  great-uncle  bore 
His  cruel  scalp-mark  to  fourscore. 
Recalling  in  her  fitting  phrase, 
So  rich  and  picturesque  and  free, 
(The  common  unrhymed  poetry 
Of  simple  life  and  country  ways,) 
The  story  of  her  early  days." 


"  Innocent  of  books. 
Was  rich  in  lore  of  fields  and  brooks,  - 
The  ancient  teachers  never  dumb 
Of  Nature's  unhoused  lyceum. 
In  moons  and  tides  and  weather  wise, 
He  read  the  clouds  as  prophecies. 
And  foul  or  fair  could  well  divine 
By  many  an  occult  hint  and  sign. 
Holding  the  cunning-warded  keys 
To  all  the  woodcraft  mysteries." 


The  picture  is  very  attractive  of  this 

"  Simple,  guileless,  childlike  man, 
Content  to  live  where  life  began; 
Strong  only  on  his  native  grounds. 
The  little  world  of  sights  and  sounds." 


JOHN  G.    WHITTIER,  243 


Next, 


"  The  dear  aunt,  whose  smile  of  cheer 
And  voice  in  dreams  I  see  and  hear, — 
The  sweetest  woman  ever  Fate 
Perverse  denied  a  household  mate, 
Who,  lonely,  homeless,  not  the  less 
Found  peace  in  love's  unselfishness." 

Then  the  elder  sister, 

"A  full,  rich  nature,  free  to  trust, 
Truthful  and  almost  sternly  just, 
Impulsive,  earnest,  prompt  to  act, 
And  make  her  generous  thought  a  fact, 
Keeping  with  many  a  light  disguise 
The  secret  of  self-sacrifice." 

The  youngest  sister,  with   "  large,  sweet,  asking  eyes," 
and  the 

"  Brisk  wielder  of  the  birch  and  rule. 
The  master  of  the  district  school," 

make  up  the  customary  group  ;  and  it  is  safe  to  say  that 
they  were  royal  company  on  that  winter  night. 

Another  description  of  the  life  of  his  boyhood  may  be 
found  in  "  The  Barefoot  Boy."  No  other  language  will  de- 
scribe so  well  those  careless,  happy  years  of  the  genuine 
country  boy. 

"  Oh  for  boyhood's  time  of  June, 
Crowding  years  in  one  brief  moon, 
When  all  things  I  heard  or  saw, 
Me,  their  master,  waited  for. 
I  was  rich  in  flowers  and  trees, 
Humming-birds  and  honey-bees ; 
For  my  spQrt  the  squirrel  played. 
Plied  the  snouted  mole  his  spade; 
For  my  taste  the  blackberry  cone 
Purpled  over  hedge  and  stone  ; 
Laughed  the  brook  for  my  delight 
Through  the  day  and  through  the  night, 
Whispering  at  the  garden  wall, 
Talked  with  me  from  fall  to  fall ; 
Mine  the  sand-rimmed  pickerel  pond, 
Mine  the  walnut  slopes  beyond, 
Mine,  on  bending  orchard  trees. 
Apples  of  Hesperides  ! 


244  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREA  T  A  UTHORS. 

"  Oh  for  festal  dainties  spread, 
Like  my  bowl  of  milk  and  bread,  — 
Pewter  spoon  and  bowl  of  wood, 
On  the  door-stone,  gray  and  rude  ! 
O'er  me,  like  a  regal  tent, 
Cloudy-ribbed,  the  sunset  bent. 
Purple-curtained,  fringed  with  gold, 
Looped  in  many  a  wind-swung  fold ; 
While  for  music  came  the  play 
Of  the  pied  frogs'  orchestra ; 
And,  to  light  the  noisy  choir, 
Lit  the  fly  his  lamp  of  fire. 
I  was  monarch  :  pomp  and  joy 
Waited  on  the  barefoot  boy." 

Is  not  this  an  accurate  picture  of  what  a  poet's  childhood 
should  be  ? 

In  his  early  youth  we  have  the  one  hint  of  a  romance 
which  his  life  contains,  and  he  shall  give  us  that  also  in 
his  own  words  :  — 

"  How  thrills  once  more  the  lengthening  chain 

Of  memory,  at  the  thought  of  thee  ! 
Old  hopes  which  long  in  dust  have  lain, 
Old  dreams,  come  thronging  back  again, 

And  boyhood  lives  again  in  me  ; 
I  feel  its  glow  upon  my  cheek, 

Its  fulness  of  the  heart  is  mine. 
As  when  I  leaned  to  hear  thee  speak, 

Or  raised  my  doubtful  eye  to  thine. 
I  hear  again  thy  low  replies, 

I  feel  thy  hand  within  my  own, 
And  timidly  again  uprise 
The  fringed  lids  of  hazel  eyes. 

With  soft  brown  tresses  overblown. 
Ah  !  memories  of  sweet  summer  eves, 

Of  moonlit  wave  and  willowy  way,  , 

Of  stars  and  flowers  and  dewy  leaves. 

And  smiles  and  tones  more  dear  than  they." 

It  is  very  tender,  very  beautiful  and  touching,  and, 
doubtless,  it  left  on  him  "  an  impress  Time  has  worn  not 
out."  And  we  doubt  if  even  yet,  when  the  shadows  of 
age  are  gathering  very  deeply  around  the  gentle  poet,  that 
memory  has  faded. 

"  Not  yet  has  Time's  dull  footstep  worn 
To  common  dust  that  path  of  flowers." 


JOHN  G.    WHITTIER.  245 

We  cannot  but  wonder  who  the  favored  "  Playmate  "  of 
the  poet  was,  and  we  sympathize  with  him  when  he  asks,  — 

"  I  wonder  if  she  thinks  of  them, 
And  how  the  old  time  seems,  — 
If  ever  the  pines  of  Ramoth  wood 
Are  sounding  in  her  dreams. 

"  I  see  her  face,  I  hear  her  voice : 
Does  she  remember  mine  ? 
And  what  to  her  is  now  the  boy 
Who  fed  her  father's  kine  ? » 

And  we  feel  an  intense  interest  in  knowing  whether  or 
not  she  cares,  when  he  tells  her,  — 

"  The  winds  so  sweet  with  birch  and  fern, 
A  sweeter  memory  blow  ; 
And  there  in  spring  the  veeries  sing 
The  song  of  long  ago. 

"  And  still  the  pines  of  Ramoth  wood 
Are  moaning  like  the  sea,  — 
The  moaning  of  the  sea  of  change 
Between  myself  and  thee !  " 

Mr.  Whittier  has  never  married,  and  his  favorite  sister 
long  presided  over  his  home  in  Amesbury,  where  his 
mother  and  the  dear  aunt  also  came  after  the  father's 
death.  It  was  the  bitterest  loss  of  his  life  when  this  beau- 
tiful sister  died,  and  he  has  written  nothing  more  touch- 
ing than  his  tribute  to  her  in  "  Snowbound  "  :  — 

"  With  me  one  little  year  ago, 
The  chill  weight  of  the  winter  snow 

For  months  upon  her  grave  has  lain ; 
And  now,  when  summer  south  winds  blow 

And  brier  and  harebell  bloom  again, 
I  tread  the  pleasant  paths  we  trod, 
I  see  the  violet-sprinkled  sod 
Whereon  she  leaned,  too  frail  and  weak 
The  hillside  flowers  she  loved  to  seek, 
Yet  following  me  where'er  she  went 
With  dark  eyes  full  of  love's  content.      ^     ^ 
The  birds  are  glad ;  the  brier-rose  fills      ")   5 
The  air  with  sweetness  ;  all  the  hills 
Stretch  green  to  June's  unclouded  sky ; 
But  stUl  I  wait  with  ear  and  eye 
For  something  gone  which  should  be  nigh, 
A  loss  in  all  familiar  things. 
In  flower  that  blooms,  and  bird  that  sings. 


246  HOME  LIFE  OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

And  while  in  life's  late  afternoon, 

Where  cool  and  long  the  shadows  grow, 
I  walk  to  meet  the  night  that  soon 

Shall  shape  and  shadow  overflow, 
I  cannot  feel  that  thou  art  far, 
Since  near  at  need  the  angels  are ; 
<"    And  when  the  sunset  gates  unbar, 

Shall  I  not  see  thee  waiting  stand. 
And,  white  against  the  evening  star. 

The  welcome  of  thy  beckoning  hand  ? "  '     '      ^ 

This  sister  Elizabeth  was  herself  a  remarkable  woman, 
and  one  of  whom  the  world  would  have  heard  more  but 
for  her  great  modesty.  She  was  gifted  with  a  fine  poetic 
taste,  and  was  not  only  appreciative,  but  might  have  been 
creative  as  well.  A  few  of  her  poems  appear  in  her 
brother's  collected  works.  She  was  beautiful  in  person, 
delicate  and  dark-eyed,  and  possessed  of  exquisite  taste  in 
everything.  The  village  of  Amesbury  still  cherishes  her 
memory  and  recounts  her  virtues.  The  tie  between  the 
sister  and  brother  was  of  the  closest  kind,  and  their  home 
life  together  for  so  many  years  as  beautiful  as  any  re- 
corded in  literature.  After  her  death  a  niece  kept  his 
house  for  some  time ;  but  though  she  was  all  devotion  to 
him,  the  old  home  was  never  home  after  the  dear  sister 
had  left  it. 

Mr.  Whittier  is  a  man  to  feel  very  much  the  loneliness 
of  his  later  life,  bereft  as  he  has  been  of  all  his  family 
friends  except  one  brother.  But  he  is  very  lovingly  and 
tenderly  cared  for  by  some  distant  relatives,  who  live  at 
Oak  Knoll,  Danvers,  Mass.,  where  he  has  passed  the 
most  of  his  time  the  last  few  years.  It  is  a  most  beautiful 
place,  and  the  poet  takes  great  delight  in  it,  preferring 
it  even  to  his  own  home  at  Amesbury,  where  he  lived  so 
long  and  where  the  greater  part  of  his  literary  work  was 
done.  The  house  and  grounds  remind  one  of  an  old 
English  manor-house  and  its  surroundings.  The  old 
forest  trees  still  beautify  it,  while  clumps  of  evergreens 
have  been  planted  here  and  there,  with  many  shrubs 
and  flowers.  In  the  distance  rise  the  blue  hills  of  Essex 
and  Middlesex,  and  near  at  hand  babbles  a  noisy  brook, 


JOHN  G.    WHITTIER.  247 

seeking  the  not  distant  sea.  All  the  beautiful  trees  of 
New  England  grow  here,  —  hickories,  chestnuts,  maples, 
birches,  pines,  and  beeches ;  and  Whittier,  who  is  a 
famous  lover  of  trees,  passes  much  time  in  these  shady 
coverts. 

Mr.  Whittier's  own  house  at  Amesbury  is  a  plain  white 
painted  wooden  house,  consisting  of  an  upright  and  ell, 
Uke  many  old-fashioned  farm-houses,  and  surrounded 
by  a  picket-fence.  It  is  roomy  and  comfortable,  and 
the  study  is  a  very  cosey  and  attractive  place,  with  its 
open  wood-fire  and  its  well-filled  book-shelves.  One 
familiar  with  its  appearance  thus  describes  it :  — 

"  One  side  is  filled  with  a  desk  and  books,  among  which 
Irish  ballads  have  a  place  of  honor  ;  and  an  old-fashioned 
Franklin  fireplace  with  polished  brasses  throws  its  cheerful 
blaze  over  carpet,  lounge,  and  easy-chairs,  and  on  walls  cov- 
ered with  many  souvenirs,  —  a  water-color  of  Harry  Fenn's, 
Hill's  picture  of  the  early  home,  fringed  gentians  painted 
by  Lucy  Larcom,  and  other  trifles  which  give  character  to 
the  room.  In  this  nook  the  'lords  of  thought'  have  been 
made  welcome  ;  here  came  Alice  and  Phoebe  Cary  on  their 
romantic  pilgrimage,  and  here  have  come  many  others  of 
the  illustrious  women  of  the  day,  most  of  whom  he  reckons 
as  his  friends  in  this  generation  as  he  did  Lydia  Maria  Child 
and  Lucretia  Mott  and  their  contemporaries  in  the  last." 

Mr.  Whittier's  personal  appearance  is  thus  described 
by  George  W.  Bungay  in  his  "  Crayon  Sketches  :  "  — 

"  His  temperament  is  nervous  bilious  ;  he  is  tall,  slender, 
and  straight  as  an  Indian;  has  a  superb  head;  his  brow 
looks  like  a  white  cloud  under  his  raven  hair ;  eyes  large, 
black  as  sloes,  and  glowing  with  expression,  .  .  .  those  star- 
like eyes  flashing  under  such  a  magnificent  forehead." 

Another  ^vriter  tells  of :  — 

"  The  fine  intellectual  beauty  of  his  expression,  the  blend- 
ing brightness  and  softness  of  the  clear  dark  eye,  the  union 
of  manly  firmness  and  courage  with  womanly  sweetness  and 
tenderness  alike  in  countenance  and  character." 


248  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

That  clear  and  bright  observer  Mr.  Wasson  says  :  — 

"  The  high  cranium,  so  lofty,  especially  in  the  dome  ;  the 
slight  and  symmetrical  backward  slope  of  the  whole  head; 
the  powerful  level  brows,  and  beneath  these  the  dark,  deep 
eyes,  so  full  of  shadowed  fire  ;  the  Arabian  complexion  ;  the 
sharp-cut,  intense  lines  of  the  face  ;  the  Hght,  tall,  erect 
stature  ;  the  quick,  axial  poise  of  the  movement,  — all  these 
traits  reveal  the  fiery  Semitic  prophet." 

His  smile  is  spoken  of  by  all  as  irradiating  his  whole  face. 
He  is  the  most  modest  and  one  of  the  shyest  of  men. 
He  can  rarely  be  exhibited  as  a  lion  in  Boston,  though 
the  celebrity-hunters  often  try  to  induce  him  thus  to  show 
himself.  His  fame  has  been  a  great  surprise  to  him, 
and  he  can  scarcely  beUeve  in  it  even  now.  When  his 
seventieth  birthday  was  celebrated  by  the  pubhshers  of 
the  "■  Atlantic  Monthly  "  by  a  Whittier  Banquet,  to  which 
all  the  great  writers  in  the  country  were  invited,  and 
where  many  fine  tributes  were  paid  to  his  genius,  he 
especially  wondered  that  all  this  honor  was  for  him.  The 
"  Literary  World  "  at  the  same  time  published  many  fine 
poems  from  distinguished  authors  addressed  to  him,  and 
he  rephed  in  that  journal  to  them,  saying :  — 

"  Beside  that  mile-stone  where  the  level  sun 
Nigh  unto  setting  sheds  his  last  low  rays 
On  word  and  work  irrevocably  done, 
Life's  blending  threads  of  good  and  ill  outspun, 
I  hear,  O  friends,  your  words  of  cheer  and  praise, 
Half  doubtful  if  myself  or  otherwise. 
Like  him  who  in  the  old  Athenian  days 
A  beggar  slept,  and  crowned  Caliph  woke." 

Although  shy  in  formal  society,  Mr.  Whittier  is  of  a 
social  nature,  and  very  much  enjoys  unrestrained  inter- 
course with  his  friends.  Visitors  were  always  made  wel- 
come at  Amesbury,  and  while  his  sister  presided  there 
the  house  was  very  attractive  to  those  who  enjoyed  its 
hospitahty.  She  was  a  witty  and  bright  woman,  who 
enlivened  every  social  circle  she  graced ;  and  Mr.  Whittier 
himself  has  a  fund  of  delicate   humor,  which  hghts  up 


JOHN  G.   WHITTIER.  249 

his  conversations  with  those  with  whom  he  is  on  famiHar 
terms,  and  he  has  a  quiet  way  of  drawing  out  the  best 
there  is  in  others,  which  causes  every  one  to  appear  well 
in  his  presence.  Children  are  his  loyal  and  enthusiastic 
friends  everywhere ;  and  he  was  known  among  them  in 
Amesbury  as  "  the  man  with  the  p£irrot,"  that  remarkable 
bird  "  Charlie  "  serving  as  a  sort  of  connecting  link  be- 
tween the  poet  and  the  little  ones.  He  is  always  ready 
for  a  game  of  romps  with  the  children  even  now,  and  they 
very  much  admire  the  stately  old  man  who  condescends 
to  them  so  kindly.  Long  ago,  when  his  little  niece  wanted 
the  scarlet  cape  which  other  children  wore,  and  there 
was  objection  upon  the  part  of  her  Quaker  mother,  Mr. 
Whittier  pleaded  so  well  for  the  little  one  that  she  was 
allowed  to  indulge  in  the  bright  trappings  of  her  mates. 
Mr.  Whittier  himself  has  never  gone  to  the  extremes  of 
Quaker  dress,  and  could  hardly  be  distinguished  from 
the  world  by  that  alone.  But  he  uses  the  "  thee  "  and 
"  thou  "  of  the  Friends,  and  it  is  very  charming  to  hear 
them  from  his  lips.  He  has  always  been  a  faithful  attend- 
ant, also,  upon  their  meetings. 

The  kindliness  of  Mr.  Whittier's  nature  has  always  led 
him  to  help  others,  especially  young  literary  aspirants, 
and  he  has  spent  a  great  deal  of  his  valuable  time  upon 
this  class.  He  cannot  bear  to  leave  a  letter  unanswered 
or  a  request  ungranted,  and  his  correspondence  has  be- 
come very  burdensome  these  latter  years.  He  has  long 
been  subject  to  very  severe  neuralgic  headaches,  and  can 
write  now  but  a  few  minutes  at  a  time ;  and  those  few 
precious  minutes  he  often  wastes  on  some  impertinent 
stranger  who  has  sent  a  great  mass  of  manuscripts  to  him 
for  criticism.  The  little  time  which  these  insatiable  cor- 
respondents leave  to  him,  he  occupies  very  pleasantly  in 
and  about  the  grounds  at  Oak  Knoll.  He  enjoys  work- 
ing in  the  fine  flower-garden,  feeding  the  squirrels,  playing 
with  the  dogs,  and  driving  the  fine  horses.  He  has  many 
friends  within  a  morning's  drive,  —  Harriet  Preston,  Gail 
Hamilton,  and  others,  —  and  driving  about  the  country 


250  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

has  always  been  one  of  his  choice  diversions.  He  is 
now  seventy-eight  years  old,  —  a  cheerful,  kindly,  essen- 
tially lovable  old  man.  He  still  goes  up  to  Boston 
occasionally  to  meet  friends  and  look  about  the  city, 
and  runs  over  to  Amesbury,  where  friends  occupy  his 
house  and  make  him  welcome ;  but  for  the  most  part 
he  remains  in  his  quiet  retreat,  cheerfully  awaiting  the 
change  which  must  be  near. 


OLIVER  WENDELL    HOLMES. 

THE  genial  "Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table"  was 
born  in  the  city  of  Cambridge,  in  Massachusetts, 
in  the  year  1809,  upon  the  day  given  to  the  Commence- 
ment exercises  of  Harvard  College.  It  was  the  day  of 
small  things  in  that  institution,  and  the  day  of  small 
things  in  American  literature.  The  child  who  was  born 
that  day  was  destined  to  add  much  to  the  estimation  in 
which  both  were  held.  He  occupied  a  professor  s  chair 
in  the  University  for  thirty-five  years,  and  did  good  work 
in  it  too ;  and  he  is  one  of  the  little  group  of  illustrious 
men  who  have  helped  to  make  a  distinctively  American 
literature,  which  is  now  honored  throughout  the  world. 
As  we  believe  with  Dr.  Holmes  that  "  it  is  an  ungenerous 
silence  which  leaves  all  the  fair  words  of  honestly-earned 
praise  to  the  writer  of  obituary  notices  and  the  marble- 
worker,"  we  shall  endeavor  to  set  forth  in  this  paper  some 
of  the  good  points  in  the  character  and  work  of  this  dis- 
tinguished man,  —  perhaps  the  best  beloved  of  our  native 
authors. 

The  Rev.  Abiel  Holmes,  the  father  of  our  hero,  was 
one  of  the  typical  New  England  ministers  of  that  day ; 
the  mother,  Sarah  Wendell,  was  from  a  Dutch  fam- 
ily, who  came  to  Boston  from  Albany  in  the  eighteenth 
century.  The  old  gambrel-roofed  house  where  the  poet 
was  bom  stood  close  to  the  buildings  of  Harvard  Uni- 


252 


HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 


versity,  and  to  the  south  flows  the  Charles  River,  so  often 
celebrated  by  Holmes  and  Longfellow  and  Lowell.  The 
environs  of  Cambridge  are  particularly  beautiful,  and  have 
been  the  subjects  of  many  charming  descriptions  by  all 
these  writers.  The  old  yellow  hip-roofed  house  was  about 
one  hundred  and  sixty  years  old  when  it  was  moved 
away  to  make  room  for  modern  improvements.  The 
New  England  colonists  knew  how  to  build  a  house,  and 
the  work  of  their  hands  puts  to  shame  the  sham  edifices 
of  the  present  day,  which  come  up  like  Jonah's  gourd  in  a 
night.  The  mansion-houses  of  New  England  are  among 
her  most  precious  inheritances ;  and  we  can  scarcely 
blame  the  families,  in  whose  hands  they  have  remained 
until  this  time,  for  feeling  a  certain  pride  in  them. 

The  study  was  the  great  attraction  to  Oliver  and  his 
brother  John.  It  was  a  large  heavy-beamed  room,  lined 
upon  all  sides  with  books, — which  was  almost  an  unheard- 
of  thing  in  this  country  at  that  time.  Here  the  boys  were 
allowed  to  choose  for  themselves  what  they  would  read, 
and  here  they  doubtless  formed  the  scholarly  tastes  of 
after-days.  The  contrast  between  this  library  and  that 
of  the  Whittier  household,  with  its  less  than  a  dozen 
books,  is  a  great  one,  and  has  something  to  do  with  the 
distinctive  flavor  of  the  work  of  the  two  men.  There  is 
a  wild  woodsy  flavor  about  Whittier  to  this  day,  pungent 
and  stimulating ;  and  about  all  that  Holmes  has  written 
is  the  atmosphere  of  books,  —  a  smell  of  Russia-leather,  as 
it  were,  and  the  mustiness  of  old  tomes.  The  childhood 
of  Oliver  was  very  happy,  and  the  memory  of  it  has  lin- 
gered with  him  through  life ;  he  has  always  been  very 
fond  of  talking  of  it  and  writing  about  it.  Of  the  old 
garden  surrounding  the  manse,  he  has  written  eloquently, 
and  one  can  almost  see  it  for  himself  from  his  descrip- 
tion, —  with  its  lilac-bushes,  its  pear-trees,  its  peaches  (for 
they  raised  peaches  in  New  England  in  those  days),  its 
lovely  nectarines,  and  white  grapes.  Old-fashioned  flowers 
grew  in  the  borders,  —  hyacinths,  coming  up  even  through 
the  snow;  tulips,  adding  their  flaming  splendor  to  the 


OLIVER    WENDELL  HOLMES.  253 

spring,  although  they  are  so  much  more  like  autumn 
flowers  ;  peonies,  of  mammoth  size  and  gorgeous  coloring ; 
flower-de-luce,  lilies,  roses  —  damask,  blush,  and  cinna- 
mon,—  larkspurs,  lupines,  and  royal  hollyhocks.  Then 
there  were  the  vegetables  growing  with  the  flowers, — 
"■  beets,  with  their  handsome  dark-red  leaves,  carrots,  with 
their  elegant  filagree  foliage,  parsley,  that  clung  to  the 
earth  like  mandrakes,  radishes,  illustrations  of  total  de- 
pravity, a  prey  to  every  evil  underground  emissary  of  the 
powers  of  darkness." 

The  Holmes  boys  were  lively  and  frolicsome,  not  un- 
like what  we  have  been  accustomed  to  hear  of  ministers' 
sons  in  general,  and  some  of  their  pranks  were  remem- 
bered in  Cambridge  for  many  a  year.  In  one  of  Dr. 
Holmes's  college  poems  he  hints  at  some  of  these  "  high 
old  times  :  "  — 

"  I  am  not  well  to-night ;  methinks  the  fumes 
Of  overheated  punch  have  something  dimmed 
The  cerebellum  or  pineal  gland, 
Or  where  the  soul  sits  regnant." 

Still,  there  was  nothing  worse  than  boyish  fun  in  any  of 
their  larks,  and  they  were  studious  beyond  their  years. 

Among  their  schoolmates  was  Margaret  Fuller.  Dr. 
Holmes  says  of  her  :  — 

"  Her  air  to  her  schoolmates  was  marked  by  a  certain 
stateliness  and  distance,  as  if  she  had  other  thoughts  than 
theirs,  and  was  not  of  them.  I  remember  her  so  well,  as 
she  appeared  at  school  and  later,  that  I  regret  that  she  had 
not  been  faithfully  given  to  canvas  or  marble  in  the  day  of 
her  best  looks.  None  know  her  aspect  who  have  not  seen 
her  living.  Margaret,  as  I  remember  her  at  school  and 
afterwards,  was  tall,  fair-complexioned,  with  a  watery  aqua- 
marine lustre  in  her  light  eyes,  which  she  used  to  make  small, 
as  one  does  who  looks  at  the  sunshine.  A  remarkable  point 
about  her  was  that  long  flexile  neck,  arching  and  undulating 
in  strange  sinuous  movements,  which  one  who  loved  her 
would  compare  to  those  of  a  swan,  and  one  who  loved  her 
not,  to  those  of  the  ophidian  who  tempted   our  common 


•54 


HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 


mother.  Her  talk  was  affluent,  magisterial,  de  haut  en  bas, 
some  would  say  euphuistic,  but  surpassing  the  talk  of  women 
in  breadth  and  audacity." 

In  due  time  young  Holmes  was  graduated  from 
Harvard,  with  a  class  which  he  has  helped  to  make  well 
known  by  his  annual  college  poems.  The  boys  of  '29 
were  a  noble  and  talented  set  of  men,  and  quite  a  num- 
ber of  them  still  live,  among  our  most  honored  citizens. 
Some  of  his  well-known  humorous  poems  were  ^vritten 
for  the  college  papers,  among  them  "  The  Dorchester 
Giant,"  ''  Evening,  by  a  Tailor,"  *'The  Spectre  Pig,"  and 
**The  Height  of  the  Ridiculous."  For  a  few  years  after 
he  left  college  he  went  on  "writing  as  funny  as  he  could," 
then  discontinued  his  Hterary  work  for  some  time,  and 
only  permanently  renewed  it  with  the  starting  of  the 
"Atlantic  Monthly"  in  1857.  Here  he  began  "The 
Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table,"  and  followed  it  with 
that  brilliant  series  of  papers  and  of  novels  which  made 
him  known  the  world  over,  as  one  of  our  most  original 
and  characteristic  writers.  Long  before  this  he  had  been 
married,  and  settled  down  for  life  in  the  city  of  Boston. 
His  wife,  to  whom  he  was  united  in  1840,  was  Ameha  Lee 
Jackson,  daughter  of  Judge  Jackson  of  the  Massachu- 
setts Supreme  Court.  They  lived  in  one  house  for  over 
twenty  years,  in  Montgomery  Place,  near  Bromfield  Street. 
Holmes  says  of  it,  in  "The  Professor  at  the  Breakfast 
Table:"  — 

"  When  he  entered  that  door,  two  shadows  glided  over  the 
threshold ;  five  lingered  in  the  doorway  when  he  passed 
through  it  for  the  last  time,  —  and  one  of  the  shadows  was 
claimed  by  its  owner  to  be  longer  than  his  own.  What 
changes  he  saw  in  that  quiet  place  !  Death  rained  through 
every  roof  but  his  ;  children  came  into  life,  grew  into  matu- 
rity, wedded,  faded  away,  threw  themselves  away;  the  whole 
drama  of  life  was  played  in  that  stock-company's  theatre  of 
a  dozen  houses,  one  of  which  was  his,  and  no  deep  sorrow 
or  severe  calamity  ever  entered  his  dwelling.  Peace  be  to 
those  walls  forever,  for  the  many  pleasant  years  he  passed 
in  them." 


OLIVER    WENDELL  HOLMES.  255 

The  three  children  born  to  him  were  Ohver  Wendell, 
Ameha  Jackson,  and  Edward.  They  all  Hve  near  the  old 
home,  and  the  second  generation  is  beginning  to  be  a 
prominent  factor  in  the  family  affairs.  The  daughter  is 
Mrs.  John  T.  Sargent,  of  Beverly  Farms,  near  Boston, 
where  Dr.  Holmes  has  passed  the  summer  months  for 
several  years  past.  All  readers  will  remember  the  Doc- 
tor's famous  "  Hunt  after  the  Captain,"  published  in  the 
"  Atlantic  "  during  the  war,  and  the  thrilling  interest  the 
country  took  in  it.  The  "  Captain  "  was  the  elder  son,  then 
just  graduated  from  Harvard,  and  belonging  to  the  Fourth 
Battalion  of  Infantry.  He  was  thrice  wounded,  and  the 
terror  and  anxiety  of  his  friends  at  home  cannot  be  de- 
scribed in  words.  He  is  now  an  associate  justice  of  the 
Supreme  Court  of  Massachusetts. 

For  a  few  years  Dr.  Holmes  was  much  in  demand  as  a 
lecturer;  but  he  never  enjoyed  that  business  very  well, 
and  after  a  while  refused  to  go  upon  any  terms.  In  1856 
he  thus  defined  his  terms  to  an  applicant  for  a  lecture  : — 

"  My  terms,  when  I  stay  over  night,  are  fifteen  dollars  and 
expenses,  a  room  with  a  fire  in  it,  in  a  pubUc-house,  and  a 
mattress  to  sleep  on,  —  not  a  feather-bed.  As  you  write  in 
your  individual  capacity,  I  tell  you  at  once  all  my  habitual 
exigencies.  I  am  afraid  to  sleep  in  a  cold  room;  I  can't 
sleep  on  a  feather-bed;   I  will  not  go  to  private  houses." 

In  the  "Autocrat"  there  is  an  account  of  his  lecturing 
experiences  by  the  landlady,  which  gives  a  pretty  good 
idea  of  some  of  his  personal  traits  :  — 

"  He  was  a  man  who  loved  to  stick  around  home,  as  much 
as  any  cat  you  ever  see  in  your  life.  He  used  to  say  he  'd 
as  lief  have  a  tooth  pulled  as  go  anywheres.  Always  got 
sick,  he  said,  when  he  went  away,  and  never  sick  when  he 
did  n't.  Pretty  nigh  killed  himself  goin'  about  lecterin'  two 
or  three  winters ;  talkin'  in  cold  country  lyceums ;  as  he 
used  to  say,  goin'  home  to  cold  parlors  and  bein'  treated  to 
cold  apples  and  cold  water,  and  then  goin'  up  into  a  cold 
bed  in  a  cold  chamber,  and  comin'  home  next  mornin'  with 
a  cold  in  his  head  as  bad  as  a  horse  distemper.     Then  he  'd 


256 


HOME  LIFE   OF  GREA  T  A  UTHORS. 


look  kind  of  sorry  for  havin'  said  it,  and  tell  how  kind  some 
of  the  good  women  was  to  him ;  how  one  spread  an  edder- 
down  comforter  for  him,  and  another  fixed  up  somethin'  hot 
for  him  after  the  lecter,  and  another  one  said,  '  There, 
now  you  smoke  that  cigar  of  yours  after  the  lecter  just  as 
if  you  was  at  home,'  —  and  if  they'd  all  been  like  that, 
he  'd  have  gone  on  lecterin'  forever ;  but  as  it  was,  he  got 
pooty  nigh  enough  of  it,  and  preferred  nateral  death  to 
puttin'  himself  out  of  the  world  by  such  violent  means  as 
lecterin'." 

In  fact,  Holmes  is  eminently  a  Bostonian,  and  has 
never  been  really  happy  off  his  native  pavements.  He, 
however,  studied  medicine  in  Paris  in  his  youth,  and  has 
made  one  or  two  visits  to  Europe  since. 

The  x\tlantic  Club  for  a  long  time  furnished  Holmes 
excellent  company,  and  he  in  turn  furnished  the  club  with 
the  wittiest  and  most  sparkling  talk  which  this  country 
probably  has  known  :  — 

"Such  jests,  that,  drained  of  every  joke. 
The  very  bank  of  language  broke ; 
Such  deeds  that  laughter  nearly  died 
With  stitches  in  his  belted  side." 

Among  those  who  took  part  in  these  delightful  re-unions 
were  Emerson,  Longfellow,  Felton,  Holmes,  Agassiz, 
Lowell,  Whipple,  Motley,  Charles  Eliot  Norton,  Edmund 
Quincy,  Francis  H.  Underwood,  Judge  Hoar,  J.  Elliot 
Cabot,  and  others.  Lowell  and  Holmes  were  the  wits 
par  excellence,  though  Judge  Hoar  did  not  fall  far  behind. 
Emerson  sat  always  with  a  seraphic  smile  upon  his  face, 
and  Longfellow  thoroughly  enjoyed  every  good  sally, 
though  not  adding  to  the  mirth-making  himself.  Dr. 
Appleton,  who  met  Dr.  Holmes  at  the  Saturday  Club, 
writes  :  — 

"  Dr.  Holmes  was  highly  talkative  and  agreeable  ;  he  con- 
verses very  much  like  the  Autocrat  at  the  Breakfast  Table,  — 
wittily,  and  in  a  literary  way,  but  perhaps  with  too  great  an 


OLIVER    WENDELL  HOLMES.  257 

infusion  of  physiological  and  medical  metaphor.  He  is  a 
little  deaf,  and  has  a  mouth  like  the  beak  of  a  bird ;  indeed, 
he  is,  with  his  small  body  and  quick  movements,  very  like  a 
bird  in  his  general  aspect." 

When  Charles  Kingsley  was  in  Boston  he  met  Holmes, 
who  came  in,  frisked  about,  and  talked  incessantly,  Kings- 
ley  intervening  with  a  few  words  only  occasionally.  At 
last  Holmes  whisked  himself  away,  saying,  "And  now  I 
must  go."  "  He  is  an  insp-sp-sp-ired  j-j-j-h-ack-daw," 
said  Kingsley. 

Mr.  Kennedy,  in  his  Hfe  of  the  poet,  thus  describes 
him  :  — 

"  In  person  Holmes  is  a  little  under  the  medium  height, 
though  it  does  not  strike  you  so  when  you  see  him,  especially 
on  the  street,  where  he  wears  a  tall  silk  hat  and  carries  a 
cane.  As  a  young  man,  he  was,  like  Longfellow,  a  good  deal 
of  an  exquisite  in  dress ;  and  he  has  always  been  very  neat 
and  careful  in  his  attire.  He  is  quick  and  nervous  in  his 
movements,  and  conveys,  in  speaking,  the  impression  of  en- 
ergy and  intense  vitality  ;  and  yet  he  has  a  poet's  sensitive- 
ness to  noises,  and  a  dread  of  persons  of  superabundant 
vitaHty  and  aggressiveness.  When  the  fountain  of  laughter 
and  smiles  is  stirred  within  him  his  face  hghts  up  with  a 
winning  expression,  and  a  laughing,  kindly  glance  of  the  eye. 
When  he  warms  up  to  a  subject  in  conversation  he  is  a  very 
rapid,  vivacious  speaker." 

Dr.  Holmes  has  been  accused  of  being  an  egotist, 
and  he  undoubtedly  does  like  to  talk  of  himself;  but  he 
talks  always  in  such  charming  fashion  that  nobody  regrets 
the  subject  of  his  discourse,  but  would  fain  have  him  go 
on  and  on  without  pause  or  limit.  He  is  a  hearty,  happy 
man,  who  is  a  good  deal  in  love  with  life,  and  seldom 
dwells  upon  its  darker  side.  But  he  has  a  very  earnest 
and  serious  side  to  his  nature,  and  is  far  from  being  a 
mere  laughing  philosopher.  He  enjoys  out-of-door  life,  as 
every  poet  must,  and  though  he  likes  best  to  live  in  the 
city,  he  takes  great  delight  in  the  country  also.     He  spent 

17 


258  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

seven  summers  upon  a  farm  of  his  own  in  the  enchanting 
Berkshire  region,  near  Pittsfield,  and  he  says  these  seven 
summers  stand  in  his  memory  like  the  seven  golden  can- 
dlesticks seen  in  the  beatific  vision  of  the  holy  dreamer. 
He  loves  rowing,  racing,  and  walking  through  green 
country  lanes.  The  New  England  wild-flowers  are  espe- 
cially dear  to  him,  and  he  has  all  a  poet's  love  for  that 
shyest  and  most  beautiful  of  all,  the  trailing  arbutus. 
He  is  very  fond  also  of  perfumes,  and  likes  the  odorous 
blossoms  best.  He  has  always  had  his  dream  of  fair 
women,  and  he  is  a  great  favorite  with  women  of  all  ages. 
He  is  not  averse  to  the  pleasures  of  the  table,  and  likes 
plenty  of  friends  around  him,  with  mirth  and  good  cheer, 
at  his  dinner  hour. 

He  has  been  accused  of  being  somewhat  aristocratic  in 
his  feelings,  and  is  doubtless  a  lover  of  the  best  society, 
as  he  interprets  that  word,  —  not  mere  wealth  or  fashion, 
but  good  blood,  generous  culture  through  more  than  one 
generation,  and  a  general  refinement  in  manners  and  in 
thought.  What  he  calls  the  Brahmin  caste  of  New  Eng- 
land is  doubtless  very,  good  society  indeed ;  and  who  shall 
blame  the  good  Autocrat  if  he  visits  in  that  circle  by 
choice?  He  would  not,  perhaps,  like  the  old  scholar  of 
whom  he  tells,  give  as  his  toast  "  to  all  the  people  who  on 
the  earth  do  dwell,"  but  he  would  select  some  very  choice 
and  rare  httle  coterie  of  those  people,  and  toast  them  with 
the  most  contagious  enthusiasm. 

That  he  is  a  man  of  fastidious  tastes  goes  without  saying, 
and  rather  critical  of  men  and  women,  in  manners  as  well 
as  morals.  An  acute  observer  of  small  social  phenomena, 
he  does  not  deem  it  beneath  his  dignity  to  criticise  the 
man  who  cannot  pronounce  "  view,"  and  the  woman,  even 
if  it  be  Margaret  Fuller,  who  says  "naw^els."  That  he  is 
a  sensitive  man  he  told  us  long  ago,  and  that  — 

"  There  are  times 
When  all  this  fret  and  tumult  that  we  hear 
Do  seem  more  stale  than  to  the  sexton's  ear 
His  own  dull  chimes. 


OLIVER    WENDELL  HOLMES.  259 

"  From  crib  to  shroud  ! 
Nurse  o'er  our  cradle  screameth  lullaby, 
And  friends  in  boots  tramp  round  us  as  we  die, 
Snuffling  aloud. 

"  Children  with  drums 
Strapped  round  them  by  the  fond  paternal  ass, 
Peripatetics  with  a  blade  of  grass 
Between  their  thumbs. 

"  Cockneys  that  kill 
Thin  horses  of  a  Sunday,  — men  with  clams, 
Hoarse  as  young  bisons  roaring  for  their  dams. 
From  hill  to  hill. 

"  Soldiers  with  guns, 
Making  a  nuisance  of  the  blessed  air, 
Child-crying  bellmen,  children  in  despair, 
Screeching  for  buns. 

"  Storms,  thunders,  waves  ! 
Howl,  crash,  and  bellow,  till  ye  get  your  fill. 
Ye  sometimes  rest ;  men  never  can  be  still 
But  in  their  graves." 

Sometimes  these  daily  trials  are  exaggerated  to  a  quite 
unbearable  point,  as  in  the  case  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Carlyle, 
who  suffered  intense  tortures  in  later  life  from  the  ordi- 
nary every-day  noises ;  but  in  the  case  of  Dr.  Holmes,  as 
with  most  people  with  healthy  nerves,  these  things  only  give 
a  whimsical  annoyance.  The  battles  of  Mrs.  Carlyle  with 
Chanticleer,  as  she  depicts  them,  have  all  the  interest  of  a 
new  Iliad,  and  the  days  before  Troy  have  not  been  studied 
with  more  breathless  interest  than  some  of  her  encounters 
with  the  makers  of  the  many  noises  with  which  London  is 
filled.  Dr.  Holmes,  too,  has  had  his  battle  with  the  music- 
grinders,  as  who  has  not  ?  Do  we  not  all  know  "  these 
crusaders  sent  from  some  infernal  clime"?  and  have  we 
not  all  felt  with  him  the  relief  when  "  silence  like  a  poul- 
tice comes  to  heal  the  blows  of  sound"?  Do  we  not  all 
know  the  "Treadmill  Song,"  also,  in  practical  life?  and 
are  we  not  intensely  weary  of  it  sometimes  ?  Not  many 
of  us  can  say  with  him,  at  the  close  of  one  of  our 
"  treadmill  "  days,  — 


26o  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 


or  add, 


"  It 's  pretty  sport ;  suppose  we  take 
A  round  or  two  for  fun." 


"  If  ever  they  should  turn  me  out 
When  I  have  better  grown, 
Now  hang  me  but  I  mean  to  have 
A  treadmill  of  my  own." 


But  this  has  been  the  good  Doctor's  spirit  through  life. 
He  has  taken  his  troubles  lightly,  and  his  labors  have  sat 
easily  upon  him.  He  has  laughed  where  many  would  have 
wept,  and  he  has  joked  where  some  would  have  been 
serious,  if  not  savage.  But  that  he  has  done  serious  work, 
and  that  it  has  been  work  which  has  borne  fruit,  who  can 
doubt  ?  His  professional  labors  are  perhaps  least  known 
of  any  of  his  various  activities,  but  they  were  many  and 
varied,  and  not  barren  of  good  results.  As  a  single  illus- 
tration, take  his  treatise  upon  "  The  Contagiousness  of 
Puerperal  Fever,"  concerning  which  he  has  said  :  — 

"When,  by  permission  of  Providence,  I  held  up  to  the 
professional  public  the  damnable  facts  connected  with  the 
conveyance  of  poison  from  one  young  mother's  chamber  to 
another's, — for  doing  which  humble  office  I  desire  to  be 
thankful  that  I  have  lived,  though  nothing  else  good  should 
ever  come  of  my  life,  —  I  had  to  bear  the  sneers  of  those 
whose  position  I  had  assailed,  and,  as  I  believe,  have  at  last 
demolished,  so  that  nothing  but  the  ghosts  of  dead  women 
stir  among  the  ruins." 

He  fought  Homoeopathy  in  the  liveliest  manner  for 
many  years,  and  latterly  threw  some  hot  shot  into  the 
ranks  of  the  Allopathists  themselves,  in  an  attack  upon  the 
excessive  use  of  drugs  in  medical  practice.  The  Medical 
Society  were  considerably  excited  by  this  vigorous  on- 
slaught, the  ripe  result  of  thirty  years'  study  and  experi- 
ence, and  disclaimed  all  responsibility  for  its  sentiments. 

*'  Throw  out  opium,"  said  Dr.  Holmes  ;  "  throw  out  a  few 
specifics  which  a  physician  is  hardly  needed  to  apply  ;  throw 
out  wine,  which  is  a  food,  and  the  vapors  of  ether  producing 


OLIVER    WENDELL   HOLMES.  261 

anaesthesia  ;  and  then  sink  the  whole  materia  medica,  as  now 
used,  to  the  bottom  of  the  sea :  the  result  would  be  all  the 
better  for  mankind,  and  all  the  worse  for  the  fishes." 

Of  his  life-long  battle  against  the  Calvinistic  theology 
all  his  readers  know.  He  has  never  lost  an  opportunity 
of  declaring  his  antipathy  to  the  theology  of  his  fathers, 
and  of  pouring  sarcasm  and  ridicule  upon  it.  His  father 
was  a  Calvinistic  divine  of  the  strictest  sect ;  but  Dr. 
Holmes  himself  has  been  a  life-long  Unitarian,  and  an 
aggressive  one.  He  owns  a  pew  in  King's  Chapel  and  is 
a  regular  attendant.  Perhaps  he  is  a  httle  of  a  fatahst. 
At  any  rate  he  always  has  eyes  for  — 

THE   TWO   STREAMS. 

Behold  the  rocky  wall 

That  down  its  sloping  sides 
Pours  the  swift  rain-drops,  blending  as  they  fall 

In  rushing  river-tides. 

Yon  stream,  whose  sources  run 

Turned  by  a  pebble's  edge, 
Is  Athabasca,  rolling  toward  the  sun 

Through  the  cleft  mountain-ledge. 

The  slender  rill  had  strayed, 

But  for  the  slanting  stone. 
To  evening's  ocean,  with  the  tangled  braid 

Of  foam-flecked  Oregon. 

So  from  the  heights  of  will 

Life's  parting  stream  descends. 
And,  as  a  moment  turns  its  slender  rill, 
Each  widening  torrent  bends. 

From  the  same  cradle's  side, 

From  the  same  mother's  knee,  — 
One  to  long  darkness  and  the  frozen  tide. 

One  to  the  Peaceful  Sea. 


JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL. 

IN  the  old  manor-house  of  Elmwood  in  Cambridge, 
close  to  what  is  now  Mount  Auburn  Cemetery,  our 
finest  representative  man  of  letters,  James  Russell  Lowell, 
was  born  and  bred.  His  father  and  his  grandfather  be- 
fore him  lived  here,  the  former  a  Unitarian  clergyman  of 
the  old  school,  well  read,  earnest,  somewhat  narrow,  but 
an  essentially  religious  man.  His  mother  was  a  gifted 
woman,  and  a  woman  of  high  culture  for  those  days. 
She  read  foreign  languages,  was  a  musician,  and  a  woman 
of  high  breeding,  and  she  stamped  her  own  individuahty 
strongly  upon  at  least  three  of  her  children. 

The  house  is  a  large  three-story  structure,  built  of 
wood,  and  is  eminently  picturesque.  The  tone  of  the 
rooms  is  sombre,  and  the  furniture  is  antique  and  solid. 
Nearly  everything  remains  as  it  was  in  the  poet's  child- 
hood; although  the  study  has  been  removed  from  the 
second  floor  to  two  connected  rooms  on  the  first,  spa- 
cious and  impressive,  and  lined  with  well-selected  books. 
The  poet  has  lived  in  this  house  throughout  his  entire 
Hfe,  —  a  thing  which  seldom  happens  to  an  American 
citizen.  In  the  hall  are  ancestral  portraits,  a  stately 
Dutch  clock,  and  the  portraits  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Lowell 
taken  by  Page  in  their  youth.  The  grounds  about  Elm- 
wood  have  been  kept  as  nearly  as  possible  in  a  state  of 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL.  263 

nature.  They  are  ample,  and  filled  with  magnificent 
trees.  The  elms  of  Cambridge  are  among  the  most 
beautiful  to  be  found  anywhere,  and  on  this  estate, 
though  not  very  numerous,  there  are  fine  specimens.  In 
front  of  the  house  are  splendid  ash-trees,  and  a  thick 
hedge  of  trees  surrounds  the  whole  enclosure.  This 
hedge  bristles  with  pines,  droops  with  willows,  and  is 
overtopped  by  gigantic  horse-chestnuts.  Near  the  house 
are  pines,  elms,  lilacs,  syringas;  and  at  the  back,  apple 
and  pear  trees.  Huge  masses  of  striped  grass  light  up 
the  thick  turf  here  and  there ;  and  all  over  the  grounds 
the  birds,  unmolested  from  time  immemorial,  build  and 
sing  in  perfect  freedom  and  content.  Long  ago  Long- 
fellow sang  of  the  herons  of  Elmwood,  and  they  are  still 
to  be  found  in  the  wooded  slopes  behind  the  house, 
where  the  Lowell  children  played  in  their  happy  child- 
hood. 

Mr.  Lowell  entered  Harvard  College  in  his  sixteenth 
year,  and,  though  never  what  was  called  a  brilliant  stu- 
dent, was  graduated  in  due  time,  and  entered  upon  the 
study  of  law.  He  passed  through  the  usual  course  and 
took  his  degree  of  LL.  B.,  but  he  was  not  noted  for  his 
love  of  study  in  the  law  school,  more  than  in  college. 
He  was  noted  for  his  love  of  reading  in  both  places,  but 
it  was  of  books  outside  the  established  course.  His 
literary  bent  was  strongly  marked  from  the  first,  and 
his  poetic  talent  developed  itself  at  an  early  day.  When 
only  twenty-two  years  of  age  he  published  his  first  vol- 
ume of  poems,  much  like  the  youthful  poems  of  other 
bards,  and  far  inferior  to  the  work  of  Bryant  at  the  same 
age.  Three  years  later  he  put  forth  a  volume  of  verses 
much  more  worthy  of  his  genius,  some  of  them  being 
favorites  still,  —  like  the  ''  Shepherd  of  King  Admetus," 
"The  Forlorn,"  "The  Heritage,"  which  achieved  the 
immortality  of  the  school-books,  and  a  few  others. 

There  was  not  a  large  sale  for  books  of  poetry  in  this 
country  at  that  time,  and  these  first  ventures  of  Lowell 
fared  much  like  other  books  of  that  day.     If  he  was  not 


264  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

quite  as  badly  off  as  poor  Thoreau,  who,  a  year  after  his 
first  thousand  was  printed,  wrote  to  a  friend  that  he  was 
now  the  owner  of  a  Ubrary  of  about  a  thousand  volumes, 
over  nine  hundred  of  which  he  wrote  himself,  he  cer- 
tainly was  not  far  ahead  of  that  origmal  writer  in  the 
matter  of  sales.  His  books,  however,  attracted  some  atten- 
tion, and  could  hardly  be  classed  under  the  head  he 
proposes  for  certain  books,  in  the  *'  Fable  for  Critics," 
namely,  "  literature  suited  to  desolate  islands,"  — 

"  Such  as  Satan,  if  printing  had  then  been  invented, 
As  the  climax  of  woe  would  to  Job  have  presented." 

Mr.  Lowell  was  married  in  1 844  to  Miss  Maria  White, 
of  Watertown  near  Cambridge,  the  lady  to  whom  some 
of  his  first  poems  were  addressed,  and  who  was  herself 
a  writer  of  very  sweet  and  tender  verse.  Mrs.  Lowell 
was  most  beautiful  and  accomplished,  a  fit  wife  for  a 
poet,  and  the  maker  of  a  restful  but  inspiring  home. 
Beautiful  children  came  to  them  to  gladden  their  lives 
for  a  little  season ;  but  all  except  one  were  recalled  in 
early  infancy,  and  the  grief  of  the  parents  was  both  acute 
and  lasting.     Many  a  time,  as  he  tells  us,  he  — 

**  looked  at  the  snow-fall, 
And  thought  of  the  leaden  sky 
That  arched  o'er  our  first  great  sorrow 
When  that  mound  was  heaped  so  high." 

And  only  in  after-years  he  — 

"  Remembered  the  gradual  patience 
That  fell  from  that  cloud  like  snow, 
Flake  by  flake,  healing  and  hiding 
The  scar  of  our  deep-plunged  woe." 

For  many  years  a  pair  of  tiny  baby-shoes,  half-worn, 
hung  over  a  picture-frame  in  the  poet's  study,  and  told 
their  sad  tale  of  the  little  feet  that  had  gone  on  before. 
Like  Sydney  Smith,  Lowell  learned  to  think  that  "  children 
are  horribly  insecure,  —  that  the  life  of  a  parent  is  the  life 
of  a  gambler ;  "  and  he  held  the  one  who  still  remained 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL.  265 

to  him  with  a  trembling  grasp  for  a  long  time.  Happily, 
she  was  spared  to  him,  and  still  adds  interest  and  pleasure 
to  his  life. 

Mr.  and  Mrs.  Lowell  went  to  Europe  in  185 1,  and 
spent  a  year  in  travel,  partly  for  the  benefit  of  Mrs. 
Lowell's  health,  which  was  always  delicate.  They  spent 
the  greater  part  of  their  time  in  Italy,  although  they  made 
brief  tours  in  France,  Switzerland,  and  England.  About 
a  year  after  their  return  Mrs.  Lowell  died,  and  another 
little  mound  in  Sweet  Auburn  was 

"  Folded  close  under  deepening  snow." 

During  the  nine  years  of  then:  married  life  all  had 
been  peaceful  and  beautiful,  and  now  there  seemed 
nothing  left  but  — 

**  To  the  spirit  its  splendid  conjectures, 
To  the  flesh  its  sweet  despair," 

and  many  hopeless  tears  over  — 

"  the  thin-worn  locket 
With  its  anguish  of  deathless  hair." 

For  a  long  time  the  heart  of  the  poet  would  admit  of 
no  consolation.  He  replied  to  every  attempt  to  soften 
his  grief,  — 

"  There  's  a  narrow  ridge  in  the  graveyard, 
Would  scarce  stay  a  child  in  his  race  ; 
But  to  me  and  my  thought  it  is  wider 
Than  the  star-sown  vague  of  Space. 

"  Your  logic,  my  friend,  is  perfect, 
Your  morals  most  drearily  true ; 
But  since  the  earth  clashed  on  her  coffin, 
I  keep  hearing  that,  and  not  you. 

"  Console  if  you  will,  I  can  bear  it ; 
'Tis  a  well-meant  alms  of  breath  ; 
But  not  all  the  preaching  since  Adam, 
Has  made  Death  other  than  Death. 


266  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS, 

"  It  is  pagan  ;  but  wait  till  you  feel  it,  — 
That  jar  of  the  earth,  that  dull  shock, 
When  the  ploughshare  of  deeper  passion 
Tears  down  to  our  primitive  rock. 

"  Communion  in  spirit !  forgive  me, 
But  I,  who  am  earthy  and  weak, 
Would  give  all  my  incomes  from  dream-land 
For  a  touch  of  her  hand  on  my  cheek. 

"  That  little  shoe  in  the  corner, 

So  worn  and  wrinkled  and  brown, 
With  its  emptiness  confutes  you, 
And  argues  your  wisdom  down." 

On  the  same  day  that  Mrs.  Lowell  died  a  child  was 
born  to  Mr.  Longfellow,  who  sent  to  his  friend  the  beau- 
tiful poem,  "  The  Two  Angels." 

"  'T  was  at  thy  door,  O  friend,  and  not  at  mine, 
The  angel  with  the  amaranthine  wreath 
Pausing,  descended,  and  with  voice  divine 
Whispered  a  word  that  had  a  sound  like  death." 

In  1854  Mr.  Lowell  was  appointed  as  Mr.  Longfellow's 
successor  to  the  chair  of  belks-lettres  in  Harvard  Univer- 
sity, —  a  place  for  which  he  was  most  admirably  fitted  by 
nature  and  by  training.  He  went  abroad  again  and  studied 
for  two  years,  chiefly  in  Diesden,  when  he  returned  and 
began  his  lectures,  which  were  much  enjoyed  by  his 
cultivated  audience.  He  dwelt  with  loving  care  upon 
Dante,  Chaucer,  Shakspeare,  and  Cervantes,  in  partic- 
ular, and  made  a  deep  impression  upon  all  who  listened 
to  him. 

In  1857  ^r-  Lowell  was  married  for  the  second  time, 
to  Miss  Frances  Dunlap  of  Portland,  Maine,  who  had  had 
charge  of  the  education  of  his  daughter  while  he  was 
abroad.  They  returned  to  the  ancestral  home  at  Elm- 
wood  soon  after  the  marriage,  and  continued  to  reside 
there  until  the  poet  was  appointed  Minister  to  Spain  by 
President  Hayes,  when  they  repaired  together  to  that 
country.     Upon  his  transfer  to  the  Court  of  St.  James, 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL.  267 

they  removed  to  London,  where  both  were  universally 
and  justly  popular.  Few  ladies  have  received  such  warm 
encomiums  in  England  as  Mrs.  Lowell,  and  few  have 
as  richly  deserved  them.  No  man  whom  our  nation 
has  sent  to  represent  us  in  England  has  been  so  highly 
praised  by  the  English  press  as  Mr.  Lowell,  and  prob- 
ably no  one  has  been  so  much  hked  by  the  class  of 
people  with  whom  he  came  chiefly  in  contact.  There 
seemed  to  be  much  wonder  in  court  circles  there  that 
America  could  produce  so  finished  a  gentleman  as  Mr. 
Lowell ;  and  perhaps  they  had  had  some  reason  to  doubt 
this,  if  they  judged  by  the  average  American  tourist. 
They  wondered,  too,  at  his  delightful  public  speaking,  — 
a  thing  to  which  Englishmen  are  not  as  much  accustomed 
as  Americans.  They  have  a  heavy,  labored  way  of  speak- 
ing, extremely  painful  to  Hsteners  accustomed  to  the  ease 
of  American  speakers  ;  and  they  were  never  weary  of  hs- 
tening  to  the  pleasing  and  graceful  oratory  of  Mr.  Lowell. 
He  was  called  upon  constantly  to  address  the  people, 
upon  all  sorts  of  occasions,  and  invariably  received  the 
highest  praise  for  his  efforts.  Much  regret  was  felt  in 
England  when  he  was  called  home ;  much  also  in  this 
country  by  those  who  had  the  honor  of  the  nation  at 
heart,  although  the  whole  people  were  glad  to  welcome 
him  back  to  his  native  land  once  more.  Mrs.  Lowell 
died  during  their  residence  in  London,  and  the  sympathies 
of  the  world  went  out  to  the  husband  in  his  affliction. 

Mr.  Lowell  came  to  the  aid  of  the  despised  Abolition- 
ists at  an  early  day.  While  it  was  still  inviting  social 
ostracism  and  public  indignity  to  do  so,  he  bravely  Hfted 
up  his  voice  in  their  defence,  and  began  lending  his  vigo- 
rous and  powerful  pen  to  the  cause  they  represented.  All 
the  traditions  of  his  life  seemed  to  bind  him  to  the  conser- 
vative classes ;  but  he  broke  away  from  them,  and  boldly 
faced  their  derision  and  their  sneers,  to  do  what  seemed 
right  in  his  own  eyes.  As  far  back  as  the  publication  of 
the  *'  Fable  for  Critics,"  he  had  dared  to  praise  Whittier, 
whom  all  the  conservatives  affected  to  despise,  — 


2  68  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS, 

"  For  singing  and  striking  in  front  of  the  war, 
And  hitting  his  foes  with  the  mallet  of  Thor." 

It  Still  required  bravery  as  well  as  kindliness  to  say  of  the 
despised  Quaker :  — 

"  All  honor  and  praise  to  the  right-hearted  bard 
Who  was  true  to  The  Voice  when  such  service  was  hard ; 
Who  himself  was  so  free  he  dared  sing  for  the  slave, 
When  to  look  but  a  protest  in  silence  was  brave  ! 
All  honor  and  praise  to  the  women  and  men 
Who  spoke  out  for  the  dumb  and  the  down-trodden  then !  " 

And  greater  bravery  still  was  required  in  those  days  to 
dare  introduce  the  name  of  Parker  into  literature  without 
denunciation  or  derision.  Of  the  church  which  had  put 
its  ban  upon  "  the  Orson  of  parsons  "  he  said  :  — 

"  They  had  formerly  damned  the  Pontifical  See, 
And  the  same  thing,  they  thought,  would  do  nicely  for  P. ; 
But  he  turned  up  his  nose  at  their  murmuring  and  shamming, 

And  cared  (shall  I  say)  not  a  d for  their  damning. 

So  they  first  read  him  out  of  their  church,  and  next  minute 
Turned  round  and  declared  he  had  never  been  in  it. 
But  the  ban  was  too  small,  or  the  man  was  too  big ; 
For  he  recks  not  their  bells,  books,  and  candles  a  fig 
(He  don't  look  like  a  man  who  would  stay  treated  shabbily, 
Sophroniscus'  son's  head  o'er  the  features  of  Rabelais) ; 
He  bangs  and  bethwacks  them, —  their  backs  he  salutes 
With  the  whole  tree  of  knowledge  torn  up  by  the  roots." 

He  concluded  his  long  description  of  the  great  arch-heretic 
in  these  words  :  — 

"  Every  word  that  he  speaks  has  been  fierily  fumaced 
In  the  blast  of  a  life  that  has  struggled  in  earnest. 
There  he  stands,  looking  more  like  a  ploughman  than  priest. 
If  not  dreadfully  awkward,  not  graceful  at  least ; 
His  gestures  all  downright,  and  some,  if  you  will, 
As  of  brown-fisted  Hobnail  in  hoeing  a  drill ; 
But  his  periods  fall  on  you,  stroke  after  stroke. 
Like  the  blows  of  a  lumberer  felling  an  oak  : 
You  forget  the  man  wholly,  you  're  thankful  to  meet 
With  a  preacher  who  smacks  of  the  field  and  the  street ; 
And  to  hear,  you  're  not  over  particular  whence, 
Almost  Taylor's  profusion,  quite  Latimer's  sense." 

The  first  of  the  Biglow  Papers  had  appeared  even  be- 
fore this, — as  early  as  1846,  during  the  progress  of  the 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL,  269 

Mexican  war,  —  and  had  showed  his  countrymen  very 
plainly  where  he  was  to  be  found  in  the  corning  struggle. 
These  brilliant  coruscations  of  wit  were  the  first  gleams  of 
light  which  irradiated  the  sombre  anti-slavery  struggle. 
The  Abolitionists  were  men  too  much  in  earnest  to  enliven 
their  arguments  with  wit  or  humor,  and  the  whole  conflict 
thus  far  had  been  stern  and  solemn  in  the  extreme.  This 
had  prevented  much  popular  enthusiasm,  except  in  natures 
as  earnest  as  their  own ;  and  many  men  who  had  before 
been  indifferent  to  the  subject  were  at  once  attracted  and 
interested  by  the  raillery  and  satire  of  Lowell.  They  en- 
joyed his  keen  thrusts,  and  began  to  talk  with  one  another 
about  them,  and  unconsciously  imbibed  a  little  of  their 
spirit.  Some  of  the  more  jingUng  rhymes  caught  the  ear 
of  the  street,  and  in  a  little  while 

"John  p. 
Robinson  he 
Sez  he  wun't  vote  for  Governor  B." 

was  heard  on  every  hand.  And  even  across  the  sea,  we 
are  told,  travellers  would  hear  some  one  repeating  the 
catch,  — 

"  But  John  p. 
Robinson  he 
Sez  they  didn't  know  everything  down  in  Judee." 

The  first  series  of  these  papers  undoubtedly  had  a 
powerful  influence  in  forming  pubhc  opinion  upon  the 
subject  of  the  abolition  of  slavery ;  and  the  second  series 
exerted  a  still  more  potent  influence  in  favor  of  sustaining 
the  government  in  the  prosecution  of  the  war,  and  in 
urging  it  to  the  emancipation  of  the  slaves.  Early  in  the 
war  he  wrote,  — 

"  It 's  slavery  that 's  the  fangs  and  thinkin'  head, 
And  ef  you  want  salvation,  cresh  it  dead." 

He  suffered  much  in  his  own  family  from  the  war,  three 
of  his  favorite  nephews  being  killed,  —  one  at  Winchester, 
one  at  Seven  Pines,  and  one  at  Ball's  Bluff.  Another 
relative  was  the  gallant  Colonel  Shaw,  who  led  the  colored 
troops  in  the  assault  on  Fort  Wagner,  and  who  there  gave 


2  70  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

up  his  heroic  Hfe.  In  the  "Commemoration  Ode" — the 
greatest  poem  which  Lowell  has  ever  written  —  he  cele- 
brates the  death  of  these  young  heroes  in  fitting  verse, 
and  gives  their  names  to  immortality.  The  effect  of  the 
poem  at  the  time  was  simply  overpowering,  so  many  other 
hearts  were  bleeding  with  his  own ;  and  it  at  once  took 
its  place  as  one  of  the  noblest  poems  in  the  language. 
The  poet  William  W.  Story  came  over  from  Rome  pur- 
posely to  hear  Lowell  deUver  this  ode,  and  felt  abun- 
dantly paid  for  the  journey  by  the  pathos  and  sublimity 
of  the  scene,  which  has  seldom  been  equalled  in  this 
country. 

Mr.  Underwood  tells  us  that  — 

"  In  person  Lowell  is  of  medium  height,  rather  slender, 
but  sinewy  and  active.  His  movements  are  deliberate  rather 
than  impulsive,  indicating  what  athletes  call  staying  qualities. 
His  hair  at  maturity  was  dark  auburn  or  ruddy  chestnut  in 
color,  and  his  full  beard  rather  lighter  and  more  glowing  in 
tint.  The  eyes  of  men  of  genius  are  seldom  to  be  classified 
in  ordinary  terms,  though  it  is  said  their  prevailing  color  is 
gray.  .  .  .  Lowell's  eyes  in  repose  have  clear  blue  and  gray 
tones,  with  minute,  dark  mottlings.  In  expression  they  are 
strongly  indicative  of  his  moods.  When  fixed  upon  study, 
or  while  listening  to  serious  discourse,  they  are  grave  and 
penetrating;  in  ordinary  conversation  they  are  bright  and 
cheery  ;  in  moments  of  excitement  they  have  a  wonderful 
lustre.  Nothing  could  be  finer  than  his  facial  expression 
while  telling  a  story  or  tossing  a  repartee.  The  features  are 
alive  with  intelligence  ;  and  eyes,  looks,  and  voice  appear  to 
be  working  up  dazzling  effects  in  concert,  like  the  finished 
artists  of  the  Com^die  Frangaise." 

As  a  conversationalist  Mr.  Lowell  is  unrivalled.  His 
wit  is  apparently  inexhaustible,  and  irradiates  his  whole 
conversation,  as  it  does  all  his  writing  except  his  serious 
poetry.  His  "  Fireside  Travels  "  was  pronounced  by  Bryant 
the  wittiest  book  ever  written ;  and  it  is  not  more  witty 
than  much  of  his  conversation.  The  brilliancy  of  his 
conversation  and  the  charm  of  his  manners  unite  to  make 


JAMES  RUSSELL   LOWELL.  271 

him  one  of  the  most  fascinating  companions  in  the  world  ; 
and  this  charm  is  felt  by  all  who  come  in  contact  with  the 
man,  and  is  not  a  thing  reserved  for  his  more  favored 
companions.  One  who  has  witnessed  an  encounter  of 
wit  between  Lowell  and  Dr.  Holmes  has  witnessed  one  of 
the  finest  exhibitions  of  mental  p)TOtechnics  of  the  day. 
His  reading  has  been  wide  and  varied,  and  he  has  all 
his  resources  at  command.  His  observation  of  men  and 
things  has  also  been  keen,  and  every  variety  of  anecdote 
and  illustration  come  forth  from  apparently  inexhaustible 
sources  as  the  needs  of  the  moment  demand.  His  love 
of  Nature  and  his  observation  of  all  her  finer  moods 
make  him  a  most  delightful  out-of-doors  companion.  In 
the  beautiful  environs  of  Cambridge  he  used  to  take  those 
long  walks  which  furnished  him  with  such  a  fund  of  accu- 
rate observation  of  the  sights  and  sounds  of  the  natural 
world.  No  man  has  a  keener  eye  for  a  bird  than  he, 
nor  a  quicker  ear  to  distinguish  between  their  songs ;  and 
no  unusual  sound  of  insect  life  escapes  his  scrutiny,  —  he 
is  keenly  alert  to  know  what  is  going  on  under  his  feet  as 
well  as  over  his  head.  The  most  modest  flower  does  not 
escape  his  eye,  nor  any  peculiarly  marked  leaf,  nor  any 
rich  bed  of  leafy  mould.  He  sees  everything  with  his 
poet's  eye,  even  to  ''  those  rifts  where  unregarded  mosses 
be."  He  has  never  been  what  is  called  a  society  man, 
though  latterly  he  has  gone  more  into  general  society. 
Formerly,  dinner-parties  and  balls  were  his  pet  aversions, 
as  one  might  suspect  from  his  poem  "  Without  and 
Within :  "  — 


"  My  coachman,  in  the  moonlight  there, 
Looks  through  the  sideUght  of  the  door 
I  hear  him  with  his  brethren  swear, 
As  I  could  do,  —  but  only  more. 

**  Flattening  his  nose  against  the  pane, 
He  envies  me  my  brilliant  lot ; 
Blows  on  his  aching  fists  in  vain, 
And  dooms  me  to  a  place  more  hot. 


2  72  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

"  Meanwhile,  I  inly  curse  the  bore 

Of  hunting  still  the  same  old  coon  ; 
And  envy  him  outside  the  door, 
1  n  golden  quiets  of  the  moon. 

**  I  envy  him  the  ungyved  prance 

By  which  his  freezing  feet  he  warms, 
And  drag  my  lady's  chain  and  dance,  — 
The  galley-slave  of  dreary  forms. 

'*  Oh,  could  he  have  my  share  of  din, 
And  I  his  quiet !  — past  a  doubt, 
'T  would  still  be  one  man  bored  within. 
And  just  another  bored  without." 

But  he  was  always  fond  of  good  company,  and  collected 
around  him  in  Cambridge,  in  the  old  days,  a  brilliant  circle 
of  congenial  friends.  Of  these,  Longfellow,  and  Professor 
Felton,  and  Agassiz,  and  Dr.  Estes  Howe  his  brother-in- 
law,  were  perhaps  the  closest ;  but  John  Holmes  and  Ed- 
mund Quincy  and  Robert  Carter  were  very  warm  friends, 
—  members  of  the  famous  Whist  Club,  and  royal  compan- 
ions all.  Dr.  Holmes  was  not  far  away,  and  always  a  con- 
stant visitor  at  Cambridge ;  and  James  T.  Fields  was  a 
cherished  friend.  William  Page,  the  painter,  and  W.  W. 
Story,  the  sculptor,  were  also  among  his  earher  friends. 
It  was  to  the  latter  that  the  series  of  letters  collected  under 
the  title  of  "  Fireside  Travels  "  were  addressed.  But  there 
is  scarcely  a  man  of  note  in  the  literary  world  whom  he 
has  not  known  in  the  course  of  his  life  ;  and  he  has  made 
friends  of  nearly  all  he  has  known.  He  has  been  a  busy 
worker,  too,  all  his  life,  —  industrious,  concentrated,  and 
indefatigable.  A  man  who  could  write  the  whole  of  "  Sir 
Launfal  "  in  two  days  knows  how  to  toil,  and  has  been 
accustomed  to  concentrate  his  faculties.  Mr.  Lowell  has 
an  utter  disbelief  in  the  materialistic  theory  of  the  Universe, 
and  expresses  it  many  times  in  his  later  poems.  He  at 
least  — 

"  envies  science  not  her  feat 
To  make  a  twice-told  tale  of  God." 

And  to  his  reverent^' al  eyes  — 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL.  273 

"  The  Ages  one  great  minster  seem, 
That  throbs  with  praise  and  prayer." 

And  his  hope  for  the  world  is  expressed  in  "  Godminster 
Chimes,"  where  he  says  :  — 

"  O  chime  of  sweet  Saint  Charity, 

Peal  soon  that  Easter  morn 
When  Christ  for  all  shall  risen  be. 

And  in  all  hearts  new  born  ! 
That  Pentecost  when  utterance  clear 

To  all  men  shall  be  given, 
When  all  shall  say  My  Brother  here. 

And  hear  My  Son  in  heaven  !  " 

Of  his  own  personal  trust  he  gives  a  picture  in  "  Sea- 
Weed:"— 

"  The  drooping  sea-weed  hears,  in  night  abyssed, 
Far  and  more  far  the  wave's  receding  shocks, 
Nor  doubts,  for  all  the  darkness  and  the  mist, 
That  the  pale  shepherdess  will  keep  her  tryst. 
And  shoreward  lead  again  her  foam-fleeced  flocks. 

♦'  For  the  same  wave  that  rims  the  Carib  shore 
With  momentary  brede  of  pearl  and  gold, 
Goes  hurrying  thence  to  gladden  with  its  roar 
Lorn  weeds  bound  fast  on  rocks  of  Labrador, 
By  love  divine  on  one  sweet  errand  rolled. 

"  And  though  Thy  healing  waters  far  withdraw, 
I  too  can  wait,  and  feed  on  hope  of  Thee 
And  of  the  dear  recurrence  of  Thy  law, 
Sure  that  the  parting  grace  my  morning  saw 
Abides  its  time  to  come  in  search  of  me." 


18 


ROBERT   AND    ELIZABETH 
BROWNING. 

COMPARATIVELY  little  has  been  known  of  the  lives 
of  these  poets.  The  fact  of  their  having  lived  in 
Italy  throughout  their  married  life  kept  them  somewhat 
aloof  from  the  gossip-loving  writers  of  their  own  country ; 
and  the  tourists,  both  from  England  and  America,  who 
were  so  fond  of  calling  upon  them  there,  seldom  succeeded 
in  establishing  anything  like  intimate  relations  with  them. 
The  little  that  is  known  can  be  briefly  stated.  Brown- 
ing's father  was  a  gentleman  of  wealth  and  of  original 
character,  who  allowed  the  striking  individuality  of  his 
son  Robert  to  develop  itself  in  a  natural  way  instead  of 
attempting  to  cramp  him  into  the  mould  of  the  other 
young  Enghshmen  of  his  rank  and  time.  At  an  early  age 
he  went  to  Italy,  where  he  passed  several  years  in  diligent 
study  of  the  institutions  and  art  of  that  favored  land  as 
well  as  of  her  literature  both  ancient  and  modern.  Young 
Browning  had  a  great  passion  for  these  studies,  and  a  great 
fondness  for  Italian  Ufe,  with  which  he  familiarized  himself 
in  all  the  different  provinces  and  all  the  principal  cities, 
living  for  long  periods  in  each  favorite  resort  where  there 
was  anything  either  in  art  or  nature  to  please  his  fine 
critical  taste.  He  studied  both  painting  and  music,  and 
has  always  been  a  fine  amateur  in  each.  He  wrote  poetry 
from  childhood,  but  published  nothing  until  he  was  about 


ROBERT  AND  ELIZABETH  BROWNING. 


75 


twenty-three  years  old,  when  "Paracelsus,"  a  dramatic 
poem,  appeared.  The  genius  of  the  writer  was  recognized 
at  once,  as  well  as  those  faults  which  have  clung  to  him 
persistently  through  life.  Two  years  after,  a  tragedy  en- 
titled "Strafford"  was  produced,  and  a  little  later,  "Sor- 
dello."  We  are  interested  in  these,  for  the  purposes  of  this 
article,  only  as  they  made  him  known  to  Elizabeth  Barrett, 
a  young  invalid  in  England,  who  at  once  felt  the  power  of 
the  high  genius  which  had  appeared  in  the  literary  world. 
She  had  written  some  poems  herself,  but  was  almost  un- 
known, and,  indeed,  expected  to  live  but  a  very  short  time. 
Returning  to  England  at  this  time,  Browning,  through 
some  knowledge  of  her  poems,  made  her  acquaintance, 
and  a  mutual  attachment  followed,  which  proved  very 
strong  and  lasting.  This  love  between  two  poets  of  such 
high  rank  is  unique  in  the  annals  of  literature.  At  first 
she  is  afraid  of  her  own  love,  and  bids  him 


"  Go  from  me.     Yet  I  feel  that  I  shall  stand 
Henceforward  in  thy  shadow.     Nevermore 
Alone  upon  the  threshold  of  my  door 
Of  individual  life,  I  shall  command 
The  uses  of  my  soul,  nor  lift  my  hand 
Serenely  in  the  sunshine  as  before, 
Without  the  sense  of  that  which  I  forebore  .  .  . 
Thy  touch  upon  the  palm.     The  widest  land 
Doom  takes  to  part  us,  leaves  thy  heart  in  mine 
With  pulses  that  beat  double.     What  I  do 
And  what  I  dream,  include  thee  as  the  wine 
Must  taste  of  its  own  grapes.     And  when  I  sue 
God  for  myself,  He  hears  that  name  of  thine 
And  sees  within  my  eyes  the  tears  of  two." 

The  whole  outlook  of  life  soon  changed  to  the  gentle 
invalid,  as  she  tells  him  later. 

"  The  face  of  all  the  world  is  changed,  I  think, 
Since  first  I  heard  the  footsteps  of  thy  soul 
Move  still,  oh,  still  beside  me,  as  they  stole 
Betwixt  me  and  the  dreadful  outer  brink 
Of  obvious  death,  where  I  who  thought  to  sink 
Was  caught  up  into  love  and  taught  the  whole 


276  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

Of  life  in  a  new  rhythm.     The  cup  of  dole 
God  gave  for  baptism,  I  am  fain  to  drink, 
And  praise  its  sweetness,  sweet  with  thee  anear. 
The  name  of  country,  heaven,  are  changed  away 
For  where  thou  art  or  shalt  be,  there  or  here  ; 
And  this  .  .  .  this  lute  and  song  .  .  .  loved  yesterday 
(The  singing  angels  know)  are  only  dear 
Because  thy  name  moves  right  in  what  they  say." 

The  wonder  of  how  she  could  have  been  able  to  live 
without  him  impresses  her  much. 

"  Beloved,  my  beloved,  when  I  think 
That  thou  wast  in  the  world  a  year  ago, 
What  time  I  sat  alone  here  in  the  snow 
And  saw  no  footprint,  heard  the  silence  sink 
No  moment  at  thy  voice  .  .  .  but  link  by  link 
Went  counting  all  my  chains  as  if  that  so 
They  never  could  fall  off  at  any  blow 
Struck  by  thy  possible  hand  .  .  .  why,  thus  I  drink 
Of  Ufe's  great  cup  of  wonder.     Wonderful, 
Never  to  feel  thee  thriU  the  day  or  night 
With  personal  act  or  speech,  nor  ever  cull 
Some  prescience  of  thee  with  the  blossoms  white 
Thou  sawest  growing  !     Atheists  are  as  dull. 
Who  cannot  guess  God's  presence  out  of  sight." 

But  in  order  to  tell  the  whole  story  we  should  have  to 
quote  all  the  "  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese,"  —  and  they 
would  make  an  alluring  chapter  certainly,  —  but  we  must 
refrain.     The  result  was  that, 

"  As  brighter  ladies  do  not  count  it  strange 
For  love  to  give  up  acres  and  degree, 
I  yield  the  grave  for  thy  sake,  and  exchange 
My  near,  sweet  view  of  Heaven  for  earth  with  thee." 

The  two  poets  were  married,  and  removed  at  once  to 
Italy,  where  the  lady's  health  improved,  and  where  they 
passed  many  years  of  happy  married  life.  Miss  Barrett's 
father  did  not  approve  the  marriage,  and  he  cast  her  off  in 
consequence,  and  never  became  reconciled  to  her,  which 
was  the  one  great  grief  of  her  happy  and  fortunate  life. 
She  had  before  marriage  lost  a  favorite  brother  by  drown- 
ing, for  whom  she  had  mourned  so  deeply  as  seriously  to 


ROBERT  AND  ELIZABETH  BROWNING. 


277 


affect  her  health.  These  were  the  only  abiding  sorrows  of 
her  life,  as  far  as  the  world  knows.  The  perfect  compan- 
ionship of  these  two  gifted  souls  has  been  described  by 
Browning  himself :  — 

"  When  if  I  think  but  deep  enough 
You  are  wont  to  answer  prompt  as  rhyme, 
And  you  too  find  without  a  rebuff 
The  response  your  soul  seeks,  many  a  time 
Piercing  its  fine  flesh  stuff." 

Their  perfect  union  he  describes  thus  :  — 

"  My  own,  see  where  the  years  conduct. 
At  first  't  was  something  our  two  souls 
Should  mix  as  mists  do ;  each  is  sucked 
Into  each  now,  on  the  new  stream  rolls, 
Whatever  rocks  obstruct. 

"  Think  when  our  one  soul  understands 
The  great  Word  which  makes  all  things  new, 
When  earth  breaks  up  and  heaven  expands, 
How  will  the  change  strike  me  and  you 
In  the  house  not  made  with  hands  ? 

"  Oh,  I  must  feel  your  brain  prompt  mine. 

Your  heart  anticipate  my  heart. 

You  must  be  just  before  in  fine, 

See  and  make  me  see  for  my  part 

New  depths  of  the  Divine." 

The  whole  poem  "  By  the  Fireside  "  should  be  quoted 
to  tell  the  story  from  his  side  ;  but  we  will  select  only  the 
close  for  our  purpose.  After  describing  how  their  love 
had  led  on  to  its  own  consummation,  he  says  :  — 

"  I  am  named  and  known  by  that  hour's  feat. 
There  took  my  station  and  degree. 
So  grew  my  own  small  life  complete 
As  Nature  obtained  her  best  of  me  — 
One  born  to  love  you,  sweet ! 

"  And  to  watch  you  sit  by  the  fireside  now, 
Back  again,  as  you  mutely  sit 
Musing  by  fire-light,  that  great  brow 
And  the  spirit-small  hand  propping  it 
Yonder,  my  heart  knows  how  1 


278  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

"  So  the  earth  has  gained  by  one  man  more, 
And  the  gain  of  earth  must  be  Heaven's  gain  too, 
And  the  whole  is  well  worth  thinking  o'er 
When  the  autumn  comes ;  as  I  mean  to  do 
One  day,  as  I  said  before." 

The  autumn  time  has  come  now  to  Bro\vning,  and  he 
has  had  ample  time  to  think  it  o'er;  for  the  "perfect 
wife,"  the  "  Leonor,"  has  lain  under  the  grasses  and  vio- 
lets of  the  English  burying- ground  in  Florence  for  twenty- 
five  years.  In  the  same  poem  from  which  we  have  quoted, 
he  says : — 

"  How  well  I  know  what  I  mean  to  do 
When  the  long  dark  autumn  evenings  come ! 
And  where,  my  soul,  is  thy  pleasant  hue? 
With  the  music  of  all  thy  voices  dumb 
In  life's  November,  too  ! 

"  I  shall  be  found  by  the  fire,  suppose, 
O'er  a  great  wise  book  as  beseemeth  age, 
While  the  shutters  flap  as  the  cross  wind  blows, 
And  I  turn  the  page,  and  I  turn  the  page, 
Not  verse  now,  only  prose  !  " 

It  is  sad  to  think  that  he  should  be  left  solitary  by  his 
fire  and  with  his  books,  but  he  has  much  that  is  beautiful 
to  look  back  upon,  —  much,  too,  that  is  beautiful  to  look 
forward  to,  let  us  hope ;  and  he  is  surrounded  by  many 
friends,  and  devotedly  attached  to  the  one  son  who  was 
the  only  fruit  of  this  royal  marriage  of  genius. 

The  house  where  the  poets  lived  together  for  fourteen 
years  in  Florence  has  been  thus  described  :  — 

"  Those  who  have  known  '  Casa  Guidi '  as  it  was  can  never 
forget  the  square  anteroom  with  its  great  picture  and  piano- 
forte at  which  the  boy  Browning  passed  many  an  hour,  — 
the  little  dining-room  covered  with  tapestry,  and  where  hung 
medallions  of  Tennyson,  Carlyle,  and  Robert  Browning, — 
the  long  room  filled  with  plaster  casts  and  studies,  which 
was  Mr.  Browning's  retreat,  —  and  dearest  of  all,  the  large 
drawing-room  where  she  always  sat.  It  opens  upon  a  bal- 
cony filled  with  plants,  and  looks  out  upon  the  old  iron-gray 
church  of  Santa  Felice. 


ROBERT  AND  ELIZABETH  BROWNING.      279 

"  There  was  something  about  this  room  which  seemed  to 
make  it  a  proper  and  especial  haunt  for  poets.  The  dark 
shadows  and  subdued  light  gave  it  a  dreamy  look,  which  was 
enhanced  by  the  tapestry-covered  walls  and  the  old  pictures 
of  saints  that  looked  out  sadly  from  their  carved  frames  of 
black  wood.  Large  bookcases  constructed  of  specimens  of 
Florentine  carving  were  brimming  over  with  wise-looking 
books.  Tables  were  covered  with  more  gayly-bound  vol- 
umes, the  gifts  of  brother  authors.  Dante's  grave  profile,  a 
cast  of  Keats's  face  and  brow  taken  after  death,  a  pen-and- 
ink  sketch  of  Tennyson,  little  paintings  of  the  boy  Browning, 
all  attracted  the  eye  in  turn,  and  gave  rise  to  a  thousand 
musings.  A  quaint  mirror,  easy-chairs  and  sofas,  and  a 
hundred  nothings,  which  always  add  an  indescribable  charm, 
were  all  massed  in  this  room.  But  the  glory  of  all,  and  that 
which  sanctified  all,  was  seated  in  a  low  arm-chair  near  the 
door.  A  small  table  strewn  with  writing-materials,  books, 
and  newspapers,  was  always  by  her  side." 

Here  Mrs.  Browning  held  her  small  court,  and  here  she 
entertained  in  the  course  of  those  years  many  of  the  most 
famous  men  and  women  of  her  time.  Almost  all  visitors 
to  Florence,  especially  English  and  American,  sought 
her  acquaintance,  and  all  were  kindly  received  by  her. 
The  conversation  was  always  earnest  there ;  she  de- 
manded a  great  deal  of  a  person,  —  one  felt  it  instinc- 
tively ;  and  few  came  to  waste  her  time  upon  trifles. 
Her  own  conversation  was  especially  earnest,  sometimes 
vivid,  and  lighted  up  by  a  humor  peculiarly  her  own. 
She  cared  nothing  for  talk  about  people.  Books  and 
humanity,  great  deeds,  and  the  great  questions  of  the 
day,  were  the  staple  of  her  conversation.  Religion,  too, 
was  an  ever  present  topic.  She  was  one  of  the  most 
religious  women  of  her  day,  and  she  interwove  it  in  all 
her  conversation,  as  she  did  in  her  writings.  Indeed,  her 
religion  was  a  part  of  herself,  and  whoever  knew  her  must 
know  of  this  strong,  deep  feeling.  One  cannot  conceive 
of  Mrs.  Browning  apart  from  her  religion.  She  would 
not  have  been  herself,  but  another.  It  was  a  rare  sight, 
indeed,  to  see   this  frail,  spiritual-looking  woman,  when 


28o  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

she  talked  upon  some  phase  of  her  favorite  theme,  with 
her  great  expressive  eyes  fairly  glowing  with  the  inten- 
sity of  her  feeling,  and  a  light  shining  through  her  face, 
as  from  the  soul  beyond.  Her  other  great  theme  was 
Italy,  and  upon  this  she  was  always  eloquent.  Indeed, 
both  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Browning  may  almost  be  said  to  have 
adopted  Italy  for  their  home,  and  to  have  transferred  their 
home  affections  to  her  soil.  Many  great  Englishmen  have 
loved  Italy,  but  none  more  warmly  than  the  Brownings. 
They  suffered  with  her  through  all  those  dark  hours  which 
preceded  her  final  emancipation  from  the  foreign  yoke, 
and  they  aided  by  their  strong,  brave  words  in  bringing 
about  that  emancipation.  Their  pens  were  used  in  her 
behalf,  perhaps  too  much  for  their  own  fame,  because 
many  of  the  subjects  on  which  they  wrote  were  of  some- 
what transient  interest  and  more  political  than  poetical. 
They  were  both  friends  and  helpers  to  the  great  states- 
man Cavour  in  all  his  labors  for  the  reconstruction  of 
Italy,  and  one  of  the  deepest  interests  of  their  lives  was 
that  reconstruction.  Mrs.  Browning's  frail  health  was 
really  mjured  at  times  by  the  serious  grief  she  felt  for 
temporary  reverses,  and  by  the  absorbing  interest  she 
took  in  the  cause. 

The  dream  of  her  hfe,  a  free  and  united  Italy,  was  ful- 
filled in  Napoleon's  formal  recognition  of  Italian  freedom 
and  unity,  the  very  week  she  died.  It  is  given  to  few 
in  this  world  thus  to  see  the  fruition  of  their  fondest 
desires,  and  to  pass  away  just  as  the  clear  morning 
light  is  dispelling  the  shadows  of  a  long  night  of  watch- 
ing and  waiting.  The  Napoleonic  poems  added  nothing 
to  her  reputation  as  a  poet,  and  were  much  regretted  by 
some  of  her  friends  ;  but  her  literary  reputation  was  noth- 
ing to  her  compared  with  her  love  for  Italy,  and  she  at 
least  had  faith  in  Napoleon's  promises. 

Mr.  Hilliard,  in  his  "  Six  Months  in  Italy,"  says  of  the 
home  behind  the  Casa  Guidi  windows  :  — 

"  A  happier  home  and  a  more  perfect  union  than  theirs  it 
is  not  easy  to  imagine ;  and  this  completeness  arises  not  only 


ROBERT  AND  ELIZABETH  BROWNING.      281 

from  the  rare  qualities  which  each  possesses,  but  from  their 
perfect  adaptation  to  each  other.  ...  As  he  is  full  of  manly 
power,  so  she  is  a  type  of  the  most  sensitive  and  delicate 
womanhood.  ...  I  have  never  seen  a  human  frame  which 
seemed  so  nearly  a  transparent  veil  for  a  celestial  and 
immortal  spirit.  She  is  a  soul  of  fire  enclosed  in  a  shell 
of  pearl.  .  .  .  Nor  is  she  more  remarkable  for  genius  and 
learning  than  for  sweetness  of  temper,  tenderness  of 
heart,  depth  of  feeling,  and  purity  of  spirit.  It  is  a  privi- 
lege to  know  such  beings  singly  and  separately;  but  to  see 
their  powers  quickened  and  their  happiness  rounded  by  the 
sacred  tie  of  marriage,  is  a  cause  for  peculiar  and  lasting 
gratitude." 

The  boy  Browning  was  very  beautiful  in  his  childhood, 
and  occupied  a  large  place  in  the  lives  of  his  parents,  w^ho 
felt  great  pride  in  showing  him  to  their  visitors.  It  is  a 
pleasant  story  told  of  the  street  beggars  who  walked 
through  the  Via  Maggio  in  those  days,  under  the  win- 
dows of  Casa  Guidi,  that  they  always  spoke  of  Mrs. 
Browning,  simply  and  touchingly,  as  "  the  mother  of  the 
beautiful  child."  But  her  love  for  this  one  beautiful  dar- 
ling taught  her  the  whole  possibility  of  motherhood.  It 
made  her  heart  go  out  in  deepest  sympathy  to  all  mothers, 
as  "  to  the  friends  unknown,  and  a  land  unvisited  over 
the  sea,"  to  whom  she  v^Tites  :  — 

"  Shall  I  speak  like  a  poet,  or  run 

Into  weak  woman's  tears  for  relief.? 
Ah,  children  !  I  never  lost  one,  — 
Yet  my  arm 's  round  my  own  little  son, 

And  love  knows  the  secret  of  grief." 

In  the  Italian  poem  "Mother  and  Poet,"  she  has 
expressed  a  mother's  feelings  as  truthfully  and  vividly 
as  any  writer  who  has  ever  touched  that  great  theme. 
She  can  describe,  too,  in  language  that  almost  blisters 
the  page  on  which  it  is  written,  that  other  class  of  mothers 
which  it  is  bitter  to  feel  that  the  earth  does  contain,  —  the 
monsters  who  would  sell  their  daughters  for  gold.  In 
that  most  powerful  story  of  Marian  in  "Aurora  Leigh," 
she  writes  thus  :  — 


282  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

"  The  child  turned  round 
And  looked  up  piteous  in  the  mother's  face 
(Be  sure  that  mother's  death-bed  will  not  want 
Another  devil  to  damn,  than  such  a  look). 
*  Oh,  mother  ! '  then  with  desperate  glance  to  heaven, 
'  God  free  me  from  my  mother,'  she  shrieked  out, 
'  These  mothers  are  too  dreadful.'     And  with  force 
As  passionate  as  fear,  she  tore  her  hands, 
Like  lilies  from  the  rocks,  from  hers  and  his. 
And  sprang  down,  bounded  headlong  down  the  steep, 
Away  from  both,  away,  if  possible, 
As  far  as  God  —  away.     They  yelled  at  her 
As  famished  hounds  at  a  hare. 

She  heard  them  yell, 
And  felt  her  name  hiss  after  her  from  the  hills 
Like  shot  from  guns." 

The  whole  of  that  wonderful  poem  of  "  Aurora  Leigh  " 
is  full  of  such  impassioned  sympathy  with  womanhood, 
and  shows  the  great  heart  of  the  poet  as  perhaps  none  of 
her  other  poems  do.  Written  in  the  maturity  of  her 
powers,  and  after  she  had  learned  much  of  life  in  all  its 
intricate  depths,  it  contains  perhaps  more  passion  and 
power  and  fiery-burning  eloquence  than  any  other  poem 
in  the  English  language.  Only  an  inspired  womanly 
hand,  which  had  sounded  all  the  deeps  of  the  world's 
scanty  wisdom,  could  have  penned  it. 

But  Mrs.  Browning  shows  great  wealth  of  human  sym- 
pathy in  all  her  poems.  Oppression  and  wrong  sink  into 
the  very  depths  of  her  nature,  and  she  cannot  bear  that 
they  shall  go  unreproved  in  the  universe  while  she  exists. 
Her  sympathy  with  our  labors  for  the  emancipation  of  the 
slaves  was  well  known,  in  a  time  when  little  sympathy  was 
to  be  found  among  the  English,  and  her  feeling  for  the 
poor  and  oppressed  of  her  native  land  was  always  deep 
and  strong.  Her  "  Cry  of  the  Children  "  will  never  be 
forgotten  while  there  are  suffering  children  in  the  world, 
and  while  there  are  human  hearts  to  listen  to  their  wail. 
It  is  as  sacred  a  piece  of  inspiration  as  the  Psalms  of 
David ;  and  the  need  for  such  an  expression  of  the  woe 
of  the  outcast  poor  of  England  is  almost  as  great  to-day 
as  when  the  immortal  poem  was  written.  Still  can  we 
ask  of  the  English  people  :  — 


ROBERT  AND   ELIZABETH  BROWNING.      283 

'  Do  you  hear  the  children  weeping,  O  my  brothers, 

Ere  the  sorrow  comes  with  years  ? 
They  are  leaning  their  young  heads  against  their  mothers, 

And  that  cannot  stop  their  tears. 
The  young  lambs  are  bleating  in  the  meadows ; 

The  young  birds  are  chirping  in  their  nest ; 
The  young  fawns  are  playing  with  the  shadows  ; 

The  young  flowers  are  blowing  toward  the  west. 
But  the  young,  young  children,  O  my  brothers. 

They  are  weeping  bitterly  ; 
They  are  weeping  in  the  playtime  of  the  others, 

In  the  country  of  the  free." 


This  poem,  Hood's  "  Song  of  the  Shirt,"  and  a  few 
others,  have  added  their  mite  to  the  influence  of  Dickens 
in  benefiting  a  little  the  poorest  of  England's  poor ;  yet 
how  much  remains  to  be  done  is  shown  in  the  present 
deplorable  condition  of  the  lower  orders  in  that  country. 
What  might  not  such  a  poet  as  Robert  Browning  have 
done,  could  he  have  emancipated  himself  from  his  in- 
volved and  difficult  style,  and  written  in  a  manly  and 
straightforward  way  of  the  world  of  men  and  women 
around  him,  instead  of  going  off  in  his  exasperating  man- 
ner into  the  Red  Cotton  Night-Cap  Country,  to  tell  us 
of  Prince  Hohenstiel  Tebwangan  Saviour  of  Society.  The 
pity  of  it  is  beyond  expression,  when  so  great  a  poet  as 
Browning  makes  himself  so  needlessly  unintelligible,  and 
loses  the  vast  influence  he  might  exert  over  the  minds 
of  his  generation  and  the  minds  of  posterity.  But  the 
thoughts  hidden  in  his  rugged  verse  are  worth  delving 
for,  and  already  societies  are  being  formed  in  England 
and  America  to  study  them.  These  societies  will  do 
something  to  popularize  him,  but  he  can  never  be 
made  what  he  was  really  capable  of  being,  the  poet 
of  the  people.  His  circle  of  readers  will  always  be 
small,  but  it  will  be  of  the  world's  best.  The  thinkers 
will  never  make  a  vast  throng  in  this  world,  while  the 
highways  of  folly  will  always  swarm  with  a  great  multi- 
tude which  no  man  can  number.  But  there  is  a  day 
after  to-day,  and  sometime,  when  the  thought  of  the 
world   shall   have   risen  to  a  higher  level,  the   name  of 


284  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

Robert  Browning  will  be  oftener  than  now  upon  the  lips 
of  men. 

Personally,  Browning  is  almost  unknown  to  his  coun- 
trymen ;  his  name  even  has  never  been  heard  by  the 
multitude.  He  is  never  pointed  out  to  strangers,  as  are 
other  men  of  letters,  and  never  attracts  any  notice  in  a 
pubhc  place.  But  he  is  well  known  to  a  select  circle, 
where  he  is  a  favorite,  and  he  goes  a  good  deal  into 
society  in  London  these  later  years.  He  is  a  great 
favorite  with  women  everywhere;  and  he  deserves  to 
be,  for  he  has  always  shown  himself  capable  of  sympa- 
thizing with  what  is  truest  and  best  in  womanhood.  He 
has  been  loyal  to  the  memory  of  his  wife  during  all  his 
long  years  of  solitude,  and  it  still  seems  that  she  holds  her 
old  place  in  his  heart.  He  is  now  seventy-four  years 
old,  —  a  fine,  well-preserved  man,  with  a  light  step  and  an 
easy  carriage.  He  was  a  handsome  man  in  his  prime, 
with  a  charmingly  expressive  face  and  a  good  figure.  His 
hair  is  now  snow-white,  but  otherwise  he  is  not  old  in 
his  looks.  His  manners  are  somewhat  precise,  and  after 
the  old  school.  He  is  fond  of  admiration,  and  is  ac- 
counted egotistical,  although  reserved  in  general  society. 
His  talk,  like  his  writings,  is  a  good  deal  upon  out-of-the- 
way  subjects,  and  is  often  deemed  unintelligible  by  those 
unfamiHar  with  his  thought.  To  his  enthusiastic  admirers 
it  seems  Hke  inspiration.  He  is  still  busy  with  his  pen, 
although  his  volumes  of  poetry  now  number  twenty  or 
more.  He  has  really  created  a  literature  of  his  own. 
How  life  appears  to  him  now,  from  the  vantage-ground 
of  his  almost  fourscore  years,  it  would  be  interesting  to 
know.     Many  years  ago  he  wrote,  a  little  wearily :  — 

"  There 's  a  fancy  some  lean  to  and  others  hate,  — 

That  when  this  life  is  ended  begins 
New  work  for  the  soul  in  another  state, 

Where  it  strives  and  gets  weary,  loses  and  wins,  — 
Where  the  strong  and  the  weak  this  world's  congeries 

Repeat  in  large  what  they  practised  in  small, 
Through  life  after  life  in  an  infinite  series,  — 

Only  the  scale 's  to  be  changed,  that 's  all. 


ROBERT  AND  ELIZABETH  BROWNING, 

'  Yet  I  hardly  know.     When  a  soul  has  seen 

By  the  means  of  Evil  that  Good  is  best, 
And  through  earth  and  its  noise  what  is  heaven's  serene,  - 

When  its  faith  in  the  same  has  stood  the  test,  — 
Why,  the  child  grown  man,  we  bum  the  rod  j 

The  uses  of  labor  are  surely  done. 
There  remaineth  a  rest  for  the  people  of  God, 

And  I  have  had  troubles  enough  for  one." 


28s 


CHARLOTTE    BRONTE. 

IN  the  crowded  little  churchyard  at  Haworth,  in  the 
wild,  bleak  Yorkshire  region,  are  eight  mounds 
which  mark  the  extinction  of  a  family  whose  genius  and 
sorrows  have  made  them  known  the  world  over.  In 
the  little  church  there  is  a  mural  tablet  which  tells  the 
names  of  this  illustrious  group,  and  the  many  visitors  to 
this  little  out-of-the-way  house  of  worship  read  with  a 
melancholy  interest  these  sad  inscriptions.  First  we  are 
told  of  Maria  Bronte,  the  mother,  who  died  in  182 1, 
when  only  thirty-nine  years  old,  leaving  the  six  children 
whose  names  follow,  all  in  the  helplessness  of  early  child- 
hood. Next  to  her  come  Maria  and  Elizabeth,  both  of 
whom  followed  her  in  1825  ;  then  Branwell  and  Emily, 
who  died  in  1848,  and  Anne,  who  lived  one  year  longer. 
But  it  is  to  the  last  of  the  inscriptions  that  all  eyes  are 
turned  with  the  greatest  interest,  for  there  we  read  — 

CHARLOTTE, 

Wife  of  the  Rev.  Arthur  Bell  Nichols,  A.  B. 

And  Daughter  of  the  Rev.  E.  P.  Bronte,  A.  M.,  Incumbent. 

She  died  March  31ST,  1855,  in  the  39TH  year  of  her  age. 

There  is  no  sadder  history  in  all  literature  than  the  his- 
tory of  this  gifted  family  and  their  early  doom.  A  pathos 
clings  about  it  which  is  really  painful,  so  few  are  the 
gleams  of  Hght  which  are  thrown  upon  the  dark  picture. 
From  the  time  when  the  Rev.  Patrick  Bronte  (himself  a 
gifted  but  somewhat  erratic  man)  brought  his  young  wife 


CHARLOTTE  BRONTE.  287 

into  the  solitude  of  this  moorland  parsonage  and  shut  her 
up  in  a  seclusion  from  which  she  was  only  removed  by 
death,  all  the  way  down  through  the  lonely  childhood 
of  the  Httle  motherless  children,  and  on  into  their  no  less 
lonely  and  more  afflicted  womanhood,  even  to  the  deaths 
of  all  the  gifted  group,  there  is  a  depth  of  sombre  gloom 
from  which  the  sympathetic  heart  must  turn  away  with  a 
bitter  pain  and  almost  a  feeling  of  hot  rebeUion  against 
Fate. 

The  utter  loneliness  of  that  part  of  Yorkshire  at  the 
time  when  Mr.  Bronte  settled  there  can  hardly  be  ima- 
gined to-day.  In  winter  all  communication  with  the  out- 
side world  was  cut  off  by  almost  impassable  mud  or 
entirely  impassable  snow.  Travellers  whom  actual  neces- 
sity compelled  to  start  forth  were  often  snowed  in  for  a 
week  or  ten  days  within  a  few  miles  of  home,  and  nobody 
thought  of  stirring  from  that  shelter  except  through  the 
pressure  of  absolute  necessity.  Isolated  as  were  the  little 
hill  villages  like  Haworth,  they  were  in  the  world,  com- 
pared with  the  loneliness  of  the  gray  ancestral  houses  to 
be  seen  here  and  there  in  the  dense  hollows  of  the  moors. 

The  inhabitants  of  this  rough  country  were  themselves 
of  wild,  turbulent  nature,  much  given  to  deadly  feuds  and 
really  dangerous  in  their  enmities.  Their  amusements 
were  all  of  the  lowest  order,  and  hard  riding  and  deep 
drinking  were  the  characteristics  of  all  the  male  popula- 
tion, while  cock-fighting  and  bull-baiting  were  thought 
refined  amusements  for  both  sexes. 

The  ministers  were  not  much  above  their  flocks  in  gen- 
eral culture,  and  the  incumbents  of  Haworth  had  been 
noted  for  their  eccentricities  for  generations.  Many  of 
them  attended  the  horse-racings  and  the  games  of  foot- 
ball which  were  played  on  Sunday  afternoons,  and  took 
as  deep  a  part  as  any  of  the  flock  in  the  drunken  carouse 
which  always  followed  a  funeral.  Mr.  Bronte  was  a  very 
different  man  from  his  predecessors,  but  was  many  years 
in  subduing  his  congregation  to  an  even  nominal  obser- 
vance of  common  moralities.     He  was,  however,  a  man 


283  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

of  high  spirit  and  imperious  will,  and,  bending  himself  to 
the  task  with  all  his  powers,  made  a  decided  impression 
upon  the  life  around  him.  The  gentle  mother  soon 
passed  away,  and  Mr.  Bront6  became  a  stern  and  silent 
man  who  kept  his  children  at  a  distance  from  himself  and 
allowed  them  httle  intercourse  with  the  outside  world. 
They  were  allowed  to  walk  out  on  the  wild  heathery 
moors,  but  not  down  in  the  village  street  j  and  they  ac- 
quired a  passionate  love  of  those  purple  moors,  which  re- 
mained with  them  through  life.  When  angry,  Mr.  Bronte 
would  say  nothing,  but  they  could  hear  him  out  at  the 
door  firing  pistol-shots  in  quick  succession  as  a  rehef  to 
his  feelings.  The  children  were  unnaturally  quiet  and 
well-behaved.     The  old  nurse  says  :  — 

"  You  would  never  have  known  there  was  a  child  in  the 
house,  they  were  such  noiseless,  good  little  creatures.  I 
used  to  think  them  spiritless,  they  were  so  different  from 
any  children  I  had  ever  seen." 

They  used  to  read  the  newspapers,  write  little  stories, 
and  act  plays,  and  at  one  time  conducted  a  magazine  of 
their  own.  Like  all  imaginative  children,  they  played  in 
stories,  each  one  taking  part  in  the  stirring  romances  they 
invented.  They  were  great  believers  in  the  supernatural, 
too,  and  the  denizens  of  the  adjoining  churchyard  played 
quite  a  prominent  part  in  their  childish  lives.  This  church- 
yard, which  was  so  near  the  parsonage,  added  much  to  the 
gloom  and  unhealthiness  of  the  old  manse,  and  many 
people  have  attributed  the  ill  health  of  all  the  girls  to  its 
close  proximity.  It  was  depressing,  to  say  the  least,  to 
such  imaginative  children  as  those  of  Mr.  Bronte. 

It  was  not  long  after  the  mother's  death  that  the  two 
older  girls,  Maria  and  Elizabeth,  were  taken  to  a  school  at 
Cowan's  Bridge,  a  small  hamlet  in  the  north  of  England, 
and  the  younger  children  were  left  more  lonely  than  ever. 
This  school,  which  had  been  selected  on  account  of  its 
cheapness,  had  been  established  for  the  daughters  of  cler- 
gymen, and  the  entire  expenses  were  fourteen  pounds  a 


CHAi^LOTTE  BRONTE. 


289 


year.  Cowan's  Bridge  is  prettily  situated,  just  where  the 
Leck-fells  sweep  into  the  plain;  and  by  the  course  of 
the  beck,  alders  and  willows  and  hazel  bushes  gi'ow. 
This  little  shallow,  sparkling  stream  runs  through  long 
green  pastures,  and  has  many  little  falls  over  beds  of  gray 
rocks.  The  school-house  had  been  made  from  an  old 
bobbin-mill,  and  the  situation  proved  to  be  remarkably 
unhealthy.  This  is  the  school  so  realistically  described 
by  Charlotte  in  "Jane  Eyre."  "Helen  Burns"  is  an 
exact  transcript  of  Maria  Bronte,  and  every  scene  is  a 
literal  description  of  events  which  took  place  at  this  school. 
The  whole  thing  was  burned  into  Charlotte's  memory  so 
indelibly  that  she  reproduced  it  with  photographic  exact- 
ness. Emily  and  Charlotte  had  followed  the  other  sisters 
there,  after  a  year  or  two,  so  that  all  of  them  suffered  to  a 
greater  or  less  extent  from  the  privations  and  abuses  they 
underwent  in  that  female  Dotheboys  Hall.  The  eldest 
sister  died,  and  the  second  became  very  ill;  yet  still 
Mr.  Bronte,  who  beHeved  in  the  hardening  process  for 
children,  kept  them  there  until  the  health  of  each  one 
failed  in  turn,  and  they  were  permanently  injured  by  their 
privations.  The  food,  which  would  perhaps  have  been 
wholesome  enough  if  properly  cooked,  was  ruined  by  a 
dirty  and  careless  woman,  who  served  it  up  in  such  dis- 
gusting messes  that  many  a  time  the  fastidious  little  Bron- 
tes could  not  eat  a  mouthful,  though  faint  with  hunger. 
There  was  always  the  most  dehcate  cleanhness  in  the  fru- 
gal Bronte  household,  and  the  children  had  early  learned 
to  be  dainty  in  such  matters.  Their  fare  at  home  was  of 
the  simplest  nature,  but  always  well  cooked ;  and  they  sim- 
ply fasted  themselves  ill  at  Cowan's  Bridge  because  they 
could  not  eat  what  was  set  before  them. 

There  was  another  trial  of  health  to  the  girls,  and  that 
was  being  obliged  in  all  kinds  of  weather  to  attend  church, 
which  was  two  miles  away.  The  road  was  a  very  bleak 
and  unsheltered  one,  where  cutting  winds  blew  in  winter 
and  where  the  snows  were  often  deep.  The  church  was 
never  warmed,  as  there  was  no  provision  made  for  any 

19 


290 


HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 


heating  apparatus  ;  and  when  the  ill-fed  and  half- clothed 
girls  had  reached  its  shelter,  they  were  often  in  actual 
chills  from  the  exposure,  and  could  not  hope  to  gain  any 
additional  warmth  there.  Colds  were  taken  in  this  way, 
from  which  the  girls  never  recovered.  They  also  suffered 
from  cold  in  the  school  itself,  and  from  the  tyranny  of  one 
of  the  teachers,  whom  Charlotte  has  mercilessly  depicted 
as  Miss  Scatcherd  in  "  Jane  Eyre."  To  the  day  of  Miss 
Bronte's  death,  she  would  blaze  with  indignation  at  any 
mention  of  this  school ;  and  who  can  wonder  ? 

After  the  death  of  the  second  daughter,  Elizabeth,  Char- 
lotte and  Emily  were  taken  from  Cowan's  Bridge,  and 
spent  some  time  at  another  school,  where  they  were  much 
happier,  and  where  they  made  a  few  life-long  friends,  par- 
ticularly Miss  Woolner,  the  principal.  One  of  her  school- 
mates gives  this  description  of  Charlotte's  arrival  at  the 
school :  — 

"  I  first  saw  her  coming  out  of  a  covered  cart,  in  very  old- 
fashioned  clothes,  and  looking  very  cold  and  miserable. 
When  she  appeared  in  the  school-room  her  dress  was 
changed,  but  just  as  old.  She  looked  a  little  old  woman,  so 
short-sighted  that  she  always  appeared  to  be  seeking  some- 
thing, and  moving  her  head  from  side  to  side  to  catch  a  sight 
of  it.  She  was  very  shy  and  nervous,  and  spoke  with  a 
strong  Irish  accent.  When  a  book  was  given  her  she 
dropped  her  head  over  it  till  her  nose  nearly  touched  it ;  and 
when  she  was  told  to  hold  her  head  up,  up  went  the  book 
after  it,  still  close  to  her  nose,  so  that  it  was  not  possible  to 
help  laughing." 

She  was  a  close  student  here,  and  a  favorite  with  the 
girls,  whom  she  would  frighten  half  out  of  their  senses  by 
her  wonderful  stories.  So  great  was  their  effect  at  times, 
that  her  hsteners  were  thrown  into  real  hysterics.  After 
leaving  this  school,  Charlotte  returned  home,  and  began 
keeping  house  and  teaching  her  sisters.  Here  several 
quiet  years  were  passed,  busy  but  monotonous.  The  girls 
spent  their  time  in  study,  in  household  tasks,  walking, 
and  drawing,  of  which  they  were  very  fond.     They  also 


CHARLOTTE  BRONTE. 


291 


read  very  thoroughly  the  few  books  which  were  accessible 
to  them.  At  nineteen  Charlotte  went  as  a  teacher  to 
Miss  Woolner's  school,  where  she  was  very  happy,  and 
remained  until  her  health  failed.  It  was  a  nervous 
trouble,  which  seemed  at  one  time  like  a  complete  break- 
ing down,  but  from  which  she  gradually  recovered  after 
her  return  home.  Emily  now  took  her  turn  in  teaching, 
going  to  a  school  at  Halifax,  where  she  came  near  literally 
dying  from  homesickness.  Emily  could  never  live  away 
from  Haworth  and  her  moors ;  and  in  this  school  she 
labored  incessantly  from  six  in  the  morning  till  eleven  at 
night,  with  only  one  half-hour  for  exercise  between.  To 
a  free,  wild,  untamable  spirit  like  Emily's,  this  was  indeed 
slavery.  She  returned  home  after  a  time,  and  Charlotte 
again  went  out  to  teach.  They  felt  the  necessity  of  earn- 
ing money,  as  their  father's  stipend  was  small,  and  he  was 
both  liberal  and  charitable,  —  and  there  was  their  brother 
Branwell  to  be  provided  for.  Of  this  brother  we  have 
not  before  spoken ;  but  he  occupied  an  important  place  in 
their  home  and  in  their  lives.  He  had  been  the  pride 
and  the  hope  of  the  family  from  early  youth.  He  was 
possessed  of  brilliant  talents,  and  was  full  of  noble  im- 
pulses, but  was  very  fond  of  pleasure,  and  soon  formed 
irregular  habits,  which  were  the  ruin  of  his  hfe  and  the 
source  of  unmeasured  grief  to  his  whole  family.  They 
had  desired  to  send  him  to  study  at  the  Royal  Academy, 
as  he  had  the  family's  fondness  for  drawing,  and  they  fan- 
cied he  would  develop  great  talent  as  an  artist.  Had  his 
habits  been  good,  their  hopes  might  have  been  realized  ;^ 
but  he  fell  so  early  into  profligacy,  that  the  idea  of  b 
coming  an  artist  was  given  up,  and  he  took  a  place  as^a 
private  tutor.  He  had  formed  his  intemperate  haoits 
when  a  mere  boy,  at  the  public  house  in  Haworth  village, 
where  he  was  esteemed  royal  company,  —  as  no  doubt  fl^, 
was,  with  his  brilliant  conversational  powers,  —  and  was 
often  sent  for  to  entertain  chance  guests,  in  whom  he  de- 
lighted, as  they  could  tell  him  so  much  of  that  distant 
world  beyond  the  confining  hills,  for  which  he  yearned. 


292 


HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 


The  pity  of  it  was  infinite  ;  for  had  he  been  kept  in  regu- 
lar courses  for  a  few  years  longer,  his  o\vn  ambition  and 
love  of  the  good  opinion  of  others  might  have  restrained 
him  altogether  from  excess.  As  it  was,  before  his  judg- 
^nent  was  matured  or  he  had  any  real  knowledge  of  the 
fatal  effect  of  the  habits  he  was  forming,  he  was  firmly 
fixed  in  the  chains  of  a  degrading  habit  from  which  death 
alone  could  free  him.  His  struggles  with  this  fatal  fasci- 
nation, and  his  sufferings,  were  cruel  in  the  extreme,  and 
inflicted  pangs  bitterer  than  death  on  all  who  loved  him. 
He  was  rather  weak  of  will,  and  had  been  allowed  to  grow 
up  self-indulgent,  through  the  over-fondness  of  his  family, 
who  were  almost  ascetic  in  their  own  habits,  but  could 
deny  him  nothing.  He  had  great  power  of  attracting 
people  and  of  attaching  them  to  him,  —  a  power  almost 
wanting  in  other  members  of  the  family,  and  which  might 
have  been  of  great  advantage  to  him  through  life,  had  he 
started  on  the  right  course.  As  it  was,  it  only  helped  to 
drag  him  down.  He  had  enough  of  Irish  blood  in  him 
to  make  his  manners  frank  and  genial,  with  a  kind  of  nat- 
ural gallantry  about  them.  He  was  generally  esteemed 
handsome.  His  forehead  was  massive,  his  eyes  good, 
his  mouth  pleasant  though  somewhat  coarse,  his  hair  and 
complexion  sandy.  Mrs.  Gaskell,  in  her  life  of  Charlotte 
Bronte,  thus  tells  of  the  second  great  grief  he  caused  his 
family :  -^ 

"  Branwell,  I  have  mentioned,  had  obtained  a  situation  as 
a  private  tutor.  Full  of  available  talent,  a  brilliant  talker,  a 
good  writer,  apt  at  drawing,  ready  of  appreciation,  and  with 
a  not  unhandsome  person,  he  took  the  fancy  of  a  married 
woman  twenty  years  older  than  himself.  It  is  no  excuse 
for  him  to  say  that  she  began  the  first  advances,  and  'made 
love '  to  him.  She  was  so  bold  and  hardened  that  she  did 
it  in  the  very  presence  of  her  children,  fast  approaching  ma- 
turity; and  they  would  threaten  her  that  if  she  did  not  grant 
them  such  and  such  indulgences,  they  would  tell  their  bed- 
ridden father  how  she  went  on  with  Mr.  Bronte.  He  was 
so  beguiled  by  this  mature  and  wicked  woman  that  he  went 
home  for  his  holiday  reluctantly,  stayed  there  as  short  a  time 


CHARLOTTE  BRONTE.  293 

as  possible,  perplexing  and  distressing  them  all  by  his  ex- 
traordinary conduct,  —  at  one  time  in  the  highest  spirits,  at 
another  in  deepest  depression,  —  accusing  himself  of  blackest 
guilt  and  treachery,  without  specifying  what  they  were  ;  and 
altogether  evincing  an  irritability  of  disposition  bordering 
on  insanity.  Charlotte  and  her  sister  suffered  acutely  from 
his  mysterious  behavior.  They  began  to  lose  all  hope  in  his 
future  career.  He  was  no  longer  the  family  pride ;  an  indis- 
tinct dread  was  creeping  over  their  minds  that  he  might 
turn  out  the  family  disgrace. 

"  After  a  time  the  husband  of  the  woman  with  whom  he  had 
intrigued,  died.  Branwell  had  been  looking  forward  to  this 
with  guilty  hope.  After  her  husband's  death  his  paramour 
would  be  free ;  strange  as  it  seems,  the  young  man  still  loved 
her  passionately,  and  now  imagined  the  time  had  come  when 
they  might  look  forward  to  being  married,  and  might  live  to- 
gether without  reproach  or  blame.  She  had  offered  to  elope 
with  him  ;  she  had  written  to  him  perpetually  ;  she  had  sent 
him  money,  twenty  pounds  at  a  time,  —  he  remembered  the 
criminal  advances  she  had  made  ;  she  had  braved  shame 
and  her  children's  menaced  disclosures  for  his  sake ;  he 
thought  she  must  love  him  ;  he  little  knew  how  bad  a  de- 
praved woman  can  be.  Her  husband  had  made  a  will,  in 
which  he  left  her  his  property  solely  on  the  condition  that 
she  should  never  see  Branwell  Bronte  again.  At  the  very 
time  the  will  was  read,  she  did  not  know  but  that  he  might 
be  on  his  way  to  her,  having  heard  of  her  husband's  death. 
She  despatched  a  servant  in  hot  haste  to  Haworth.  He 
stopped  at  the  Black  Bull,  and  a  messenger  was  sent  to  the 
parsonage  for  Branwell.  He  came  down  to  the  little  inn, 
and  was  shut  up  with  the  man  some  time.  Then  the  groom 
went  away,  and  Branwell  was  left  in  the  room  alone.  More 
than  an  hour  elapsed  before  sign  or  sound  was  heard ;  then 
those  outside  heard  a  noise  like  the  bleating  of  a  calf,  and 
on  opening  the  door  he  was  found  in  a  kind  of  fit,  succeed- 
ing to  the  stupor  of  grief  which  he  had  fallen  into  on  hear- 
ing that  he  was  forbidden  by  his  paramour  ever  to  see  her 
again,  as,  if  he  did,  she  would  forfeit  her  fortune.  .  .  .  Let 
her  hve  and  flourish.  He  died,  his  pockets  filled  with  her  let- 
ters, which  he  carried  about  his  person  perpetually  in  order 
that  he  might  read  them  as  often  as  he  pleased.  He  Hes 
dead,  and  his  doom  is  only  known  to  God's  mercy." 


294  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

But  he  did  not  die  at  once.  He  lived  as  an  abidin<:j 
care  and  sorrow  and  disgrace  to  his  family  for  three  years. 
He  began  taking  opium,  and  drank  more  than  ever. 
"  For  some  time  before  his  death  he  had  attacks  of  de- 
lirium tremens,  of  the  most  frightful  character ;  he  slept 
in  his  father's  room,  and  he  would  sometimes  declare  that 
either  he  or  his  father  would  be  dead  before  morning." 
The  trembling  sisters,  sick  with  fright,  watched  the  night 
through  before  the  door,  in  such  agony  as  only  loving  hearts 
can  feel  at  the  ruin  of  a  loved  one.  The  scenes  at  the  old 
manse  at  this  time  would  serve  to  answer  the  question 
so  often  asked,  Where  did  three  lonely  women  like  the 
Bronte  sisters  ever  form  their  conceptions  of  such  char- 
acters as  they  depicted?  How  their  pure  imaginations 
could  conceive  of  such  beings  as  Heathcote  and  the 
Tenant  of  Wildfell  Hall  may  perhaps  be  guessed  by 
those  who  learn  what  sort  of  a  man  Branwell  Bronte  had 
grown  to  be.  But  the  long  agony  was  over  at  last,  and 
Branwell  found  his  rest ;  and  the  sisters,  although  they 
could  not  but  feel  the  relief  of  his  death,  mourned  for  him 
with  passionate  sorrow. 

Let  us  turn  to  pleasanter  glimpses  of  the  life  at  Haworth, 
some  of  them  preceding  the  events  of  which  we  have 
been  writing.  Charlotte  had  spent  a  year  or  two  in  Brus- 
sels, teaching  in  a  school  there,  and  gaining  some  of  those 
experiences  which  she  afterwards  embodied  in  her  novels. 
Then  she  had  returned  home,  and  the  sisters  had  talked 
of  establishing  a  school.  None  of  the  famous  books  had 
yet  been  written.  To  show  some  of  Charlotte's  ideas  at 
this  time,  one  or  two  extracts  from  her  letters  may  be 
of  interest.     She  writes  in  1 840  :  — 

"  Do  not  be  over-persuaded  to  marry  a  man  you  can  never 
respect,  —  I  do  not  say  love  j  because  I  think  if  you  can  re- 
spect a  person  before  marriage,  moderate  love  at  least  will 
come  after ;  and  as  to  intense  passion,  I  am  convinced  that 
that  is  no  desirable  feeling.  In  the  first  place  it  seldom  or 
never  meets  with  a  requital ;  and  in  the  second  place,  if  it 
did,  the  feeling  would  be  only  temporary  ;  it  would  last  the 


CHARLOTTE  BRONTE.  295 

honeymoon,  and  then  perhaps  give  place  to  disgust.  Cer- 
tainly this  would  be  the  case  on  the  man's  part ;  and  on  the 
woman's  —  God  help  her  if  she  be  left  to  love  passionately 
and  alone. 

"  I  am  tolerably  well  convinced  that  I  shall  never  marry 
at  all.  Reason  tells  me  so,  and  I  am  not  so  utterly  the  slave 
of  feeling  but  that  I  can  occasio7ially  hear  her  voice." 

This  does  not  sound  much  like  the  woman  who  could 
write  of  Jane  Eyre  and  Rochester ;  but  there  were  depths 
of  passion  in  the  little  woman,  probably  unsuspected  by 
herself. 

Again  she  writes,  in  1845  :  — 

"  I  know  that  if  women  wish  to  escape  the  stigma  of  hus- 
band-hunting, they  must  act  and  look  like  marble  or  clay,  — 
cold,  expressionless,  bloodless  ;  for  every  appearance  of  feel- 
ing, of  joy,  sorrow,  friendliness,  antipathy,  admiration,  dis- 
gust, are  alike  construed  by  the  world  into  an  attempt  to 
hook  a  husband.  Never  mind  !  well-meaning  women  have 
their  own  consciences  to  comfort  them,  after  all.  Do  not 
therefore  be  too  much  afraid  of  showing  yourself  as  you  are, 
affectionate  and  good-hearted  ;  do  not  harshly  repress  senti- 
ments and  feelings  excellent  in  themselves,  because  you 
fear  that  some  puppy  may  fancy  you  are  letting  them  come 
out  to  fascinate  him ;  do  not  condemn  yourself  to  live  only 
by  halves,  because  if  you  showed  too  much  animation  some 
pragmatical  thing  in  breeches  might  take  it  into  his  pate  to 
imagine  that  you  desired  to  dedicate  your  life  to  inanity. 
Write  again  soon,  for  I  feel  rather  fierce  and  want  stroking 
down." 

That  the  sisters  were  not  without  their  own  perturba- 
tions and  heart  troubles,  even  in  the  deep  seclusion  of 
their  lonely  home,  may  be  judged  by  some  extracts  from 
a  poem  written  by  Emily,  who  never  confided  anything 
to  any  friend  but  her  own  sombre  muse. 

"  Cold  is  the  earth,  and  the  deep  snow  piled  above  thee, 
Far,  far  removed,  cold  in  the  dreary  grave. 
Have  I  forgot,  my  only  love,  to  love  thee, 
Severed  at  last  by  Time's  all-severing  wave  ? 


296  HOME  LIFE  OF  GREA  T  A  UTHORS. 

"  Now,  when  removed,  do  my  thoughts  no  longer  hover 
Over  the  mountains  on  that  northern  shore, 
Resting  their  wings  where  heath  and  fern  leaves  cover 
Thy  noble  heart  forever,  evermore  ? 

"  Cold  in  the  grave,  and  fifteen  wild  Decembers 

From  these  brown  hills  have  melted  into  spring ; 
Faithful  indeed  the  love  is  that  remembers 
After  such  years  of  change  and  suffering." 

That  Charlotte  had  some  admirers  among  her  father's 
curates  is  well  known,  and  that  Mr.  Nichols  paid  court 
to  her  eight  years  previous  to  the  time  of  her  marriage 
with  him.  That  she  was  capable  of  intense  and  passion- 
ate devotion  there  can  be  no  doubt,  but  we  have  no 
hint  as  to  whom  she  had  lavished  it  upon,  in  any  of  her 
letters. 

She  was  always  extremely  sensitive  about  her  personal 
appearance,  considering  herself  irredeemably  ugly,  and 
always  thinking  that  people  must  be  disgusted  with  her 
looks.  She  purposely  made  her  heroine  in  "Jane  Eyre" 
unattractive,  as  she  felt  it  an  injustice  that  a  woman  must 
always  be  judged  by  her  looks,  and  she  felt  that  novelists 
were  somewhat  to  blame  in  the  matter,  as  they  always 
made  their  heroines  beautiful  in  person,  however  unat- 
tractive in  mind  or  character.  She  was  extremely  short,  — 
"stunted,"  as  she  herself  calls  it,  —  never  having  grown  any 
after  the  days  of  her  starvation  at  Cowan's  Bridge.  She 
had  soft  brown  hair,  and  good  and  expressive  eyes,  though 
she  was  so  near-sighted ;  a  large  mouth ;  and  a  broad, 
square,  somewhat  overhanging  forehead.  Her  voice  was 
very  sweet,  and  she  was  not  at  all  the  unattractive  person 
she  fancied  herself,  though  by  no  means  beautiful.  She 
was  exquisitely  neat  in  her  dress,  and  dainty  about  her 
gloves  and  shoes.  She  had  a  keen  and  delicate  touch, 
and  could  do  any  difficult  work  with  her  hands,  which 
were  the  smallest  perhaps  ever  seen  upon  a  grown  woman. 
Her  needlework  was  marvellous,  and  she  was  an  exquisite 
housekeeper,  attending  to  the  minutest  details  herself. 
Her  circle  of  friends  and  acquaintances  was  a  very  narrow 


CHARLOTTE  BRONTE.  297 

one  all  her  life,  though  after  the  publication  of  "Jane 
Eyre  "  it  of  course  widened  and  improved. 

Han-iet  Martineau  and  Mrs.  Gaskell  proved  themselves 
warm  and  enthusiastic  friends  to  Charlotte  \  and  Thack- 
eray, who  met  her  in  London,  where  she  visited  her  pub- 
lishers, was  much  pleased  with  her,  and  wrote  very  kindly 
of  her  after  her  death.  Sir  James  and  Lady  Kay  Shuttle- 
worth  became  much  interested  in  her,  and  she  enjoyed  her 
visits  to  them  in  Westmoreland  very  highly.  The  Lake 
country  was  a  revelation  to  her,  though  she  was  somewhat 
oppressed  by  seeing  it  all  in  company.     She  writes  :  — 

"  If  I  could  only  have  dropped  unseen  out  of  the  carriage, 
and  gone  away  by  myself  in  amongst  those  grand  hills  and 
sweet  dales,  I  should  have  drunk  in  the  full  power  of  this 
glorious  scenery.     In  company,  this  can  hardly  be." 

Again  she  writes  to  another  :  — 

"  Decidedly  I  find  it  does  not  agree  with  me  to  prosecute 
the  search  for  the  picturesque  in  a  carriage.  A  wagon,  a 
spring-cart,  even  a  post-chaise  might  do  ;  but  a  carriage  up- 
sets everything.  I  longed  to  slip  out  unseen,  and  to  run 
away  by  myself  in  amongst  the  hills  and  dales.  Erratic  and 
vagrant  instincts  tormented  me ;  and  these  I  was  obliged  to 
control,  or  rather  suppress,  for  fear  of  growing  in  any  de- 
gree enthusiastic,  and  thus  drawing  attention  to  '  the  lioness,' 
the  authoress." 

The  fact  of  her  having  sprung  into  sudden  fame  imme- 
diately after  she  was  known  as  the  author  of  "Jane  Eyre  " 
—  the  most  wonderful  book  of  her  day  —  was  a  matter  of 
great  surprise  to  her,  and  would  doubtless  have  afforded  her 
very  keen  pleasure,  only  that  she  was  so  overburdened  with 
home  cares  and  sorrows  at  that  time.  Even  the  sweet- 
ness of  her  literary  triumph  was  embittered  by  the  sadness 
of  the  home  hfe.  "  Jane  Eyre  "  had  been  written  during 
their  worst  trials  with  Branwell,  and  "  Shirley  "  just  after  his 
death  and  during  the  illness  of  Emily  and  Anne,  both  works 
being  the  product  of  the  very  darkest  hours  of  her  dark- 
ened life.     If  these  works  are  morbid  and  unhealthy,  as 


298 


HOME  LIFE  OF  GREA  T  A  UTHORS. 


has  been  asserted,  is  it  any  wonder,  when  we  consider 
what  must  have  been  the  state  of  her  mind  while  writing 
them  ?  She  was  most  devotedly  attached  to  her  sisters  ; 
indeed,  her  very  hfe  may  be  said  to  have  been  bound  up 
in  theirs ;  and  it  was  peculiarly  hard  for  her  to  lose  them 
just  when  success  appeared  to  be  at  hand,  and  they  might 
have  looked  forward  to  something  of  happiness  during  the 
remainder  of  their  lives.  Charlotte  gives  her  own  affect- 
ing account  of  Emily's  death,  which  throws  some  light 
upon  the  character  of  that  remarkable  woman,  as  remark- 
able perhaps  as  Charlotte  herself,  although  she  did  not 
live  to  do  any  work  as  lasting  as  that  of  her  elder  sister. 
She  says : — 

"  But  a  great  change  approached.  Affliction  came  in  that 
shape  which  to  anticipate  is  dread  ;  to  look  back  on,  grief. 
In  the  very  heat  and  burden  of  the  day  the  laborers  failed 
over  their  work.  My  sister  Emily  first  declined.  .  .  .  Never 
in  all  her  life  had  she  lingered  over  any  task  that  lay  before 
her,  and  she  did  not  linger  now.  She  sank  rapidly.  She 
made  haste  to  leave  us.  Day  by  day,  when  I  saw  with  what 
a  front  she  met  suffering,  I  looked  on  her  with  an  anguish 
of  wonder  and  love.  I  have  seen  nothing  like  it ;  but  indeed 
1  have  never  seen  her  parallel  in  anything.  Stronger  than  a 
man,  simpler  than  a  child,  her  nature  stood  alone.  The  aw- 
ful point  was  that,  while  full  of  ruth  for  others,  on  herself  she 
had  no  pity ;  the  spirit  was  inexorable  to  the  flesh  ;  from  the 
trembling  hands,  the  unnerved  limbs,  the  fading  eyes,  the 
same  service  was  exacted  as  they  had  rendered  in  health. 
To  stand  by  and  witness  this,  and  not  dare  to  remonstrate, 
was  a  pain  no  words  can  render." 

Emily  never  left  the  house  after  Branwell's  death. 
She  made  no  complaint,  but  her  friends  could  see  that 
she  was  deadly  ill.  Yet  she  would  have  no  doctor,  and 
insisted  upon  going  on  with  her  work  as  usual.  This  she 
did  until  she  was  actually  dying.  Branwell  had  insisted 
upon  standing  up  to  die ;  and  poor  Emily  had  scarcely 
consented  to  He  down,  when  she  was  gone.  Their  will- 
power in  their  last  agonies  was  something  almost  fearful 


CHARLOTTE  BRONT&.  299 

to  contemplate.  As  the  old  bereaved  father  and  Char- 
lotte and  Anne  followed  the  coffin  to  the  grave,  Emily's 
old,  fierce,  faithful  bull-dog,  to  which  she  had  been  so 
much  attached,  came  out  and  walked  beside  them. 
When  they  returned  he  lay  down  by  Emily's  door,  and 
howled  pitifully  for  many  days.  Charlotte  recurred  to 
this  death-scene  continually.     In  one  letter  she  says  :  — 

"  I  cannot  forget  Emily's  death-day ;  it  becomes  a  more 
fixed,  a  darker,  a  more  frequently  recurring  idea  in  my  mind 
than  ever.  It  was  very  terrible.  She  was  torn,  conscious, 
panting,  reluctant,  though  resolute,  out  of  a  happy  life.  But 
it  will  not  do  to  dwell  on  these  things." 

Anne  Bronte  did  not  long  survive  her  sister,  and 
Charlotte  was  now  alone  except  that  she  had  the  care 
of  her  aged  father,  who  was  feeble  and  nearly  bhnd. 
The  awful  loneliness  of  the  old  house  almost  crazed  her, 
but  she  went  faithfully  to  work,  and  bore  up  with  un- 
heard of  fortitude.  Two  or  three  solitary  years  went  by, 
when  Mr.  Nichols,  her  father's  curate,  renewed  his  suit 
to  Miss  Bront6.  Mrs.  Gaskell  tells  us  that  he  was  one 
who  had  known  her  intimately  for  years,  and  was  not 
a  man  to  be  attracted  by  any  kind  of  literary  fame.  He 
was  a  grave,  reserved,  conscientious  man,  with  strong 
rehgious  feeling.  In  silence  he  had  watched  and  loved 
her  long. 

She  thus  describes  the  meeting  :  — 

"  Instead  I  heard  a  tap,  and  like  lightning  it  flashed  upon 
me  what  was  coming.  He  entered.  He  stood  before  me. 
What  his  words  were  you  can  imagine  ;  his  manner  you  can 
hardly  realize,  nor  can  I  forget  it.  He  made  me  for  the  first 
time  feel  what  it  costs  a  man  to  declare  affection  when  he 
doubts  response.  .  .  .  The  spectacle  of  one  ordinarily  so 
statue-Hke,  thus  trembling,  stirred,  and  overcome,  gave  me  a 
strange  shock.  I  could  only  entreat  him  to  leave  me  then, 
and  promise  a  reply  on  the  morrow." 

Mr.  Bronte,  when  consulted,  was  so  displeased  with 
the  whole  proceeding,  and  was  so  weak  at  this   time, 


300  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

that  Charlotte,  fearing  ill  consequences  to  him,  gave  Mr. 
Nichols  a  refusal,  whereupon  he  resigned  his  curacy  and 
left  the  country.  But  a  year  or  two  after,  seeing  that  Char- 
lotte was  unhappy,  and  fearing  for  her  health,  her  father 
withdrew  his  opposition ;  Mr.  Nichols  was  recalled,  and 
the  marriage  finally  took  place.     Mrs.  Gaskell  says  :  — 

"She  expressed  herself  as  thankful  to  One  who  had 
guided  her  through  much  difficulty  and  much  distress  and 
perplexity  of  mind  ;  and  yet  she  felt  what  most  thoughtful 
women  do,  who  marry  when  the  first  flush  of  careless  youth 
is  over,  that  there  was  a  strange,  half-sad  feeling  in  making 
announcements  of  an  engagement,  for  cares  and  fears  come 
mingled  inextricably  with  hopes.  One  great  relief  to  her 
mind  at  this  time  was  derived  from  the  conviction  that  her 
father  took  a  positive  pleasure  in  all  the  thoughts  about  and 
preparations  for  her  wedding.  He  was  anxious  that  things 
should  be  expedited,  and  much  interested  in  preparations 
for  Mr.  Nichols's  reception  into  the  household." 

Again :  — 

"The  news  of  the  wedding  had  slipt  abroad  before  the 
little  party  came  out  of  the  church,  and  many  old  and  hum- 
ble friends  were  there,  seeing  her  look  'like  a  snowdrop'  as 
they  say.  Her  dress  was  white  embroidered  muslin,  with  a 
lace  mantle,  and  white  bonnet  trimmed  with  green  leaves, 
which  perhaps  might  suggest  the  resemblance  to  the  pale 
wintry  flower." 

Her  married  love  and  happiness  were  of  very  brief 
duration ;  a  few  short  months,  and  she  lay  upon  the  bed 
from  which  she  would  rise  no  more.  Waking  for  an  in- 
stant, we  are  told,  "  from  this  stupor  of  intelligence,  she 
saw  her  husband's  woe-worn  face,  and  caught  the  sound 
of  some  murmured  words  of  prayer  that  God  would  spare 
her.  '  Oh,'  she  whispered  forth,  '  I  am  not  going  to  die, 
am  I  ?  He  will  not  separate  us,  we  have  been  so  happy.' " 
But  love  or  prayer  could  not  stay  the  hand  of  death, 
which  had  marked  all  of  this  family  for  an  early  doom, 
and  she  passed  sweetly  away  in  the  arms  of  her  devoted 


CHARLOTTE  BRONTE. 


301 


husband.  Thank  God  for  the  Httle  ghmpse  of  womanly- 
happiness  which  He  gave  her  at  the  last,  and  for  the  faith- 
ful mourner  who  held  her  memory  so  sacred  for  many 
years  in  the  old  gray  manse.  Mr.  Nichols  watched  faith- 
fully over  the  old  father  in  his  last  days,  and  only  left 
Haworth  when  duty  held  him  there  no  longer,  although 
the  place  had  grown  inexpressibly  sad  to  him  after  his 
affliction.  To  the  graves  of  the  gifted  women  who  sleep 
there,  pilgrimages  are  made  to  this  day.  The  York- 
shire region  has  changed  much ;  and  many  now  seek  its 
wild  heathery  moors,  not  only  for  its  own  sake,  but  for 
the  sake  of  those  who  so  loved  and  suffered  in  the  little 
gray  parsonage  among  its  bleak  hills.  Long  will  the 
genius  which  created  "  Jane  Eyre  "  and  "  Villette  "  and 
"  Shirley  "  delight  the  world  ;  but  the  remembrance  of  the 
writer's  womanly  virtues  will  linger  when  all  these  shall 
have  passed  away. 


MARGARET  FULLER. 

THERE  was  little  in  the  life  of  the  people  of  New 
England  in  the  early  part  of  the  present  century 
upon  which  to  feed  the  imagination  of  a  precocious  and 
romantic  child  like  Margaret  Fuller ;  and  her  childhood, 
though  outwardly  fortunate  and  well  placed,  was  one  of 
labor  and  repression,  and  far  from  happy,  if  we  may  judge 
by  her  own  account  of  it.  The  theology  of  the  people 
was  gloomy.  They  made  everything  connected  with  re- 
ligion unlovely,  and  this  austerity  was  particularly  distaste- 
ful to  one  of  Margaret's  imaginative  temperament  and 
heroic  disposition.  Her  ungratified  imagination  brought 
her  early  into  conflict  with  the  circumstances  and  sur- 
roundings of  her  life. 

All  the  poetry  of  her  nature  cried  out  against  the  lives 
of  toil  and  care  by  which  she  was  surrounded,  —  lives  at 
that  time  lighted  up  by  little  of  art  or  literature  or  music, 
but  held  to  a  stern  standard  of  duty  and  self-abnegation. 
Margaret's  nature  craved  beauty  and  poetry  and  art 
and  lavish  affection,  and  it  was  nursed  on  a  somewhat 
grim  diet  of  hard  work  and  little  expressed  affection, 
although  her  parents  were  both  loving  and  intelligent. 
Her  father  himself  educated  her,  being  a  Harvard  gradu- 
ate, and  a  lawyer  and  politician  of  that  day.  He  taught 
her  Latin  at  the  age  of  six  years ;  and  she  says  that  the 
lessons  set  for  her  were  as  many  and  various  as  the  hours 
would  allow,  and  on  subjects  far  beyond  her  age.    These 


MARGARET  FULLER.  303 

lessons  were  recited  to  her  father  after  office  hours,  which 
kept  the  poor  tired  child  up  till  late  in  the  evening,  and 
as  a  result  the  youthful  prodigy  was  terrified  at  night  by 
dreams  and  illusions,  and  given  to  sleep-walking.  The 
result  of  such  over-tension  of  a  childish  mind  was  a 
morbid  and  unhealthy  state  of  both  body  and  mind ; 
and  though  she  loved  study,  these  great  demands 
made  upon  her  powers  almost  overcame  her  with  their 
weight.  She  had  a  natural  passion  for  reading,  and 
when  a  mere  child  singled  out  Shakespeare,  Cervantes, 
and  Moliere,  from  all  the  books  in  the  library,  for  her 
especial  favorites. 

She  was  but  eight  years  old  when  she  took  a  passion- 
ate interest  in  "  Romeo  and  Juliet,"  and  was  disgraced 
in  the  family  for  perusing  it  on  Sunday;  and  the  im- 
aginative child  was  always  seeking  for  the  heroic 
figures  of  her  Shakespearian  world  in  the  every-day  life 
about  her,  and  was  always  disappointed.  Altogether, 
we  must  call  it  an  unhappy  and  unfortunate  childhood, 
and  cannot  but  think  much  finer  intellectual  as  well  as 
moral  results  would  have  followed  a  different  treatment 
in  her  home. 

In  her  early  girlhood  she  mixed  much  in  the  college 
society  at  Cambridge,  and  would  have  been  taken  for  a 
much  older  person  than  she  really  was.  She  was  not 
handsome,  but  her  animated  countenance  made  its  own 
impression,  and  awakened  interest  in  almost  all  who  saw 
her.  She  made  some  of  her  Hfe-long  friends  at  this  time. 
Dr.  Hedge,  James  Freeman  Clarke,  and  William  Henry 
Channing  were  among  them.  With  Emerson  she  made 
acquaintance  a  little  later,  through  Miss  Martineau,  then 
visiting  in  this  country.  She  was  not  at  this  time  an  agree- 
able person.  She  was  much  derided  for  her  self-esteem 
by  people  who  knew  her  slightly,  and  was  also  accused  of 
hauteur  and  arrogance.  Even  Lowell  was  thus  impressed 
by  her,  and  put  her  in  the  pillory  in  the  "  Fable  for 
Critics."  He  proposes  to  establish  new  punishments  for 
criminals,  thus ;  — 


304  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREA  T  A  UTHORS. 

"  I  propose  to  shut  up  every  doer  of  wrong 
With  these  desperate  books,  for  such  terms,  short  or  long, 
As  by  statute  in  such  cases  made  and  provided 
Shall  be  by  our  wise  legislators  decided  : 
Thus  :  —  Let  murderers  be  shut,  to  grow  wiser  and  cooler, 
At  hard  labor  for  life  on  the  works  of  Miss ." 


And  again : 


"  For  a  woman  must  surely  see  well,  if  she  try, 
The  whole  of  whose  being 's  a  capital  I." 

And  still  further  :  — 

"  Phoebus  !  you  know 
That  the  infinite  Soul  has  its  infinite  woe, 
As  I  ought  to  know,  having  lived  cheek  by  jowl. 
Since  the  day  I  was  born,  with  the  Infinite  Soul." 

But  people  who  knew  her  well  soon  lost  this  unfavor- 
able impression,  and  she  was  almost  idohzed  by  her  real 
friends.  Mr.  Emerson  thus  records  his  first  impressions 
of  her :  "  She  had  a  face  and  frame  that  would  indicate 
frlness  and  tenacity  of  life.  .  .  .  She  was  then,  as  always, 
carefully  and  becomingly  dressed,  and  of  lady-like  self- 
possession.  For  the  rest,  her  appearance  had  nothing  pre- 
possessing. Her  extreme  plainness,  a  trick  of  incessantly 
opening  and  shutting  her  eyelids,  the  nasal  tone  of  her 
voice,  —  all  repelled ;  and  I  said  to  myself,  '■  We  shall 
never  get  far.'"  He  adds  :  "  I  believe  I  fancied  her  too 
much  interested  in  personal  history ;  and  her  talk  was  a 
comedy  in  which  dramatic  justice  was  done  to  everybody's 
foibles.  I  remember  she  made  me  laugh  more  than  I 
liked."  But,  "soon  her  wit  had  effaced  the  impression 
of  her  personal  unattractiveness,  and  the  eyes,  which  were 
so  plain  at  first,  swam  with  fun  and  drolleries  and  the 
very  tides  of  joy  and  superabundant  life,"  and  he  saw 
"  that  her  satire  was  only  the  pastime  and  necessity  of  her 
talent ;  "  and  as  he  came  to  know  her  better,  "  her  plane 
of  character  rose  constantly  in  my  estimation,  disclosing 
many  moods  and  powers  in  successive  platforms  or  ter- 
races,   each    above    each."      All   superior  women   were 


MARGARET  FULLER. 


305 


drawn  to  her  at  once,  and  even  those  noted  only  for 
beauty  or  social  talent  vied  in  their  devotion  to  her.  A 
few  years  later,  it  was  for  this  circle  that  her  famous  con- 
versation classes  were  held  in  Boston ;  and  so  great  was 
their  popularity  that  she  continued  them  for  six  years. 
These  conversations  were  entirely  unique  in  character, 
and  attracted  great  attention  in  their  day.  The  novelty 
of  such  a  departure  in  the  Boston  of  forty  years  ago  may 
be  imagined,  and  the  criticism  drawn  upon  a  woman 
who  should  inaugurate  such  an  innovation  was  in  some 
cases  very  s'^vere.  In  regard  to  these  same  conversations, 
as  in  other  things,  the  impression  she  made  was  twofold. 
Mrs.  Howe  says  :  ''  Without  the  fold  of  her  admirers  stood 
carping,  unkind  critics  ;  within  were  enthusiastic  and  grate- 
ful friends."  But  as  to  her  great  eloquence  and  abihty, 
there  was  but  one  opinion.  Even  critics  admitted  that  no 
woman  had  spoken  like  this  before.  And  she  addressed 
her  fine  audience  of  Boston's  most  cultivated  women  with 
entire  ease  and  freedom,  and  gave  many  of  them  an 
impulse  toward  an  intellectual  career  which  nothing  else' 
at  that  time  could  have  done. 

Here  was  the  real  beginning  of  what  may  be  called  the 
woman  question  in  this  country.  Before  Margaret  Fuller's 
day  the  agitation  regarding  woman's  career  and  w^ork  in 
the  world  w^as  practically  unknown  here  ;  and  all  the  ideas 
which  have  now  become  incorporated  into  the  platform 
of  the  woman's  party  found  in  her  their  first  and  perhaps 
their  best  exponent.  Very  litde  that  is  new  has  since 
been  urged  upon  this  question.  Her  powerful  mind 
seemed  to  have  grasped  the  whole  subject,  and  to  have 
given  it  the  best  expression  of  which  it  was  capable.  She 
embodied  her  ideas  after  a  time  in  her  book,  "  Woman  in 
the  Nineteenth  Century ;  "  and  although  the  literature  of 
the  subject  is  now  voluminous,  that  book  is  still  read  and 
referred  to. 

Finding  it  necessary  to  support  herself  and  to  care  for 
her  mother  and  brothers  after  her  father's  death,  she  at 
first  taught  school,  at  one  time  in  Mr.  Alcott's  famous 

20 


3o6 


HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 


school  in  Boston  and  afterwards  in  Providence,  and  then 
took  a  position  upon  the  "  New  York  Tribune,"  kindly 
offered  her  by  Mr.  Greeley.  She  supported  her  brothers 
in  college,  and  aided  her  mother  for  some  years,  putting 
by  her  own  ambitions  with  a  cheerful  outward  appearance, 
though  oftentimes  with  a  heavy  heart.  She  had  many 
and  very  ambitious  literary  projects,  few  of  which  were 
ever  destined  to  be  carried  out.  For  a  woman  who  occu- 
pied so  much  the  minds  of  the  men  of  her  day  and  of  a 
succeeding  generation,  she  really  left  little  upon  which  to 
base  their  admiration.  What  she  was,  rather  than  what 
she  did,  seems  to  have  made  its  impression  upon  her  time. 
That  her  vocation  was  to  speak  rather  than  to  write, 
there  seems  Httle  doubt.  She  had  the  rare  but  much- 
prized  gift  of  eloquence,  and  in  these  latter  days  would 
no  doubt  have  made  a  very  large  success  as  a  speaker. 
Some  who  listened  to  her  think  that  she  might  have  been 
the  peer  of  Wendell  Phillips  in  oratory,  had  she  bent 
her  powers  entirely  in  that  direction.  As  it  is,  her  genius 
has  become  almost  wholly  a  tradition.  There  are  many 
to-day  who  cannot  guess  the  secret  of  the  continued  in- 
terest the  world  feels  in  her.  That  secret  lies  largely  in 
the  impression  she  made  upon  many  of  the  famous  men 
of  her  time.  They  have  transmitted  her  name  to  posterity 
along  ^vith  their  oum.  Horace  Greeley  at  first  determined 
not  to  like  her  personally,  and  avoided  her  even  after  she 
became  a  member  of  his  family ;  but  he  ended  by  grow- 
ing as  enthusiastic  over  her  as  the  rest.  Even  crabbed 
Carlyle,  though  much  prejudiced  against  women  of  her 
sort,  bore  testimony  to  his  hking  for  her.  He  writes  to 
Emerson :  — 

"  Margaret  is  an  excellent  soul ;  in  real  regard  with  both 
of  us  here.  Since  she  went  I  have  been  reading  some  of 
her  papers  in  a  new  book  we  have  got ;  greatly  superior  to 
all  I  knew  before,  —  in  fact,  undeniable  utterances  of  a  truly 
heroic  mind,  altogether  unique,  so  far  as  I  know,  among  the 
writing  women  of  this  generation ;  rare  enough  too,  God 
knows,  among  the  writing  men.     She  is  very  narrow,  but 


MARGARET  FULLER.  307 

she  is  truly  high.     Honor  to  Margaret,  and  more  and  more 
good  speed  to  her  !  " 

It  was  not  until  1846  that  Margaret's  long  desire  to 
visit  Europe  was  gratified.  It  had  been  the  dream  of  her 
life,  and  one  cannot  but  be  sad  at  thought  of  its  tragic 
ending.  She  spent  some  time  in  London,  seeing  all  the 
celebrities  of  the  day  there,  and  then  crossed  over  to  Paris. 
Like  London,  Paris  had  then  some  brilliant  men  and 
women,  whose  peers  she  has  not  seen  since.  Rachel  was 
the  queen  of  the  tragic  stage,  George  Sand  queen  of  the 
literary  domain.  De  Balzac,  Eugene  Sue,  Dumas  pere, 
and  Beranger  were  all  alive,  and  the  centre  of  the  Parisian 
literar}'  coterie.  Liszt  and  Chopin  held  the  musical  world 
in  the  bondage  of  sweet  sounds.  Into  this  little  inner 
circle  Margaret  entered,  and  did  not  fail  to  make  her 
mark  there.  She  was  a  second  Madame  de  Stael  in  con- 
versation, and  in  her  litde  circle  was  recognized  as  such. 

From  Paris  she  went  to  Italy,  where  the  real  romance 
of  her  life  was  enacted  and  its  tragic  de?iouement  pre- 
pared for.  Italy  had  been  her  promised  land  from  early 
youth.  She  had  longed  for  its  sunny  clime,  amid  the 
storms  and  winds  of  bleak  New  England  ;  for  its  historic 
associations,  amid  the  poverty  of  a  land  without  a  past ; 
for  its  architectural  splendors,  amid  the  bareness  and 
baldness  of  the  New  World  cities  ;  for  the  grandeur  of  its 
ancient  art,  amid  the  poverty  of  the  America  of  that  day ; 
for  its  impassioned  music,  in  a  land  almost  devoid  of  mu- 
sical culture ;  and  she  had  longed  for  the  beautiful,  sen- 
suous, idle  life  of  its  people,  through  all  the  strain  of  a 
strenuous  and  overworked  existence.  Her  vision  had 
been  fair,  and  at  first  she  was  much  disappointed.  In 
artistic  or  architectural  magnificence  St.  Peter's  and  the 
Transfiguration  could  not  disappoint  a  soul  like  Margaret's, 
but  she  was  deeply  disappointed  in  the  Hfe  of  the  Italian 
people  and  in  the  general  charm  of  the  country. 

She  fell  upon  exciting  times  in  Italy.  There  had  grown 
up  the  fiercest  hatred  of  the  Austrian   rule,  which   had 


3o8  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

recently  been  aggravated  by  foolish  acts  of  repression  and 
violence.  The  whole  country  was  in  a  ferment.  Mazzini, 
whom  Margaret  had  met  in  London,  was  here  awaiting  his 
opportunity.  Mrs.  Howe  says  :  "  Up  and  down  went  the 
hopes  and  the  hearts  of  the  Liberal  party.  Hither  and 
thither  ran  the  tides  of  popular  affection,  suspicion,  and 
resentment.  The  Pope  was  the  idol  of  the  moment. 
The  Grand  Duke  of  Tuscany  yielded  to  pressure  when- 
ever it  became  severe.  The  minor  princes,  who  had  from 
their  birth  been  incapable  of  an  idea,  tried  as  well  as  they 
could  to  put  on  some  semblance  of  concession  without 
really  yielding  anything."  Margaret  was  soon  in  close 
relations  with  leading  Liberals,  and  shared  all  their  hopes 
and  fears  and  some  of  their  dangers. 

At  this  time  she  first  met  the  young  Italian  nobleman, 
Ossoli,  who  became  her  husband.  She  became  separated 
from  her  party  one  day  at  some  service  at  St.  Peter's, 
and,  wandering  around  trying  to  find  them,  became  tired 
and  somewhat  agitated.  A  young  man  of  gentlemanly 
address  offered  his  services  to  her  as  guide ;  and  after 
looking  in  vain  for  her  friends,  she  was  obliged  to  accept 
his  escort  home,  night  having  come  on  and  no  carriages 
being  in  attendance.  They  became  mutually  attracted, 
and  the  acquaintance  continued,  with  that  disregard  of 
conventionality  for  which  American  women  are  noted 
when  abroad.  Although  much  younger  than  Margaret, 
he  seemed  to  be  greatly  interested  in  her ;  and  although 
he  had  none  of  her  intellectual  tastes,  she  was  equally 
interested  in  him. 

A  very  romantic  attachment  sprang  up  between  them, 
which  ended  after  a  few  months  in  a  secret  marriage. 
Her  reason  for  the  secrecy  lay  in  the  troubled  times,  and 
the  fear  of  Ossoli's  being  deprived  of  his  paternal  inher- 
itance on  account  of  marrying  a  Protestant.  They  had 
great  hopes  of  the  coming  revolution,  and  trusted  to  a 
more  liberal  government  to  give  him  his  rights  despite  the 
fact  of  his  marrying  outside  the  Church  of  Rome.  He 
was  as  poor  as  Margaret  herself;  and  this  was  another 


MARGARET  FULLER.  ^09 

reason  for  living  apart  for  a  time.  He  was  a  captain  in 
the  Civic  Guard,  and  at  this  time  much  occupied  with 
mihtary  duties.  It  was  at  this  time  that  the  Roman  Re- 
pubhc  was  proclaimed,  with  great  pomp  of  rejoicing ; 
and  Margaret  chronicles  the  opening  of  the  Constitutional 
Assembly,  with  great  display  of  processions  and  banners. 
In  one  procession  walked  a  Napoleonic  prince  side  by 
side  with  Garibaldi,  both  having  been  chosen  as  deputies. 
All  this  raised  the  hopes  of  the  Liberals  throughout  Europe 
to  the  highest  point,  and  Margaret  was  almost  transported 
with  happy  excitement, — probably  not  understanding  as 
well  as  the  natives  of  Italy  how  ill  prepared  that  country 
was  for  liberty,  and  how  soon  the  despotic  power  would 
again  close  around  the  people.  In  point  of  fact,  the  Re- 
public lasted  but  a  few  days,  and  Margaret's  brief  time  for 
rejoicing  was  over,  and  her  own  personal  troubles  became 
very  urgent  and  oppressive. 

A  son  had  been  born  to  her  some  months  before,  and 
had  of  necessity  been  left  in  the  hands  of  a  nurse  in  the 
country,  as  the  marriage  had  not  yet  been  made  known. 
During  all  the  pomp  of  processions  and  the  ringing  of 
bells  and  firing  of  cannon,  she  had  heard  the  voice  of  her 
infant  crying  at  Rieti.  She  had  not  seen  him  for  three 
months,  on  account  of  the  troublous  times.  She  lay  awake 
whole  nights  contriving  how  she  might  end  the  separation 
which  seemed  kilhng  her;  but  circumstances  were  too 
strong  for  her,  and  the  object  so  dear  to  her  heart  could 
not  be  compassed.  The  French  were  already  in  Italy. 
The  siege  of  Rome  soon  ended  in  the  downfall  of  the 
Republic,  and  the  government  was  placed  in  the  hands  of 
a  triumvirate.  The  city  once  invested,  military  hospitals 
became  a  necessity.  Margaret  was  named  superintendent 
of  the  hospital  of  the  Fate  Bene  FrateUi.  "  Night  and  day," 
writes  Mrs.  Story,  "  Margaret  was  occupied,  and  with  the 
Princess  Belgiojoso  so  ordered  and  disposed  the  hospitals 
that  their  conduct  was  admirable.  Of  money  they  had  very 
little,  and  they  were  obliged  to  give  their  time  and  thoughts 
in  its  place.     I  have  walked  through  the  wards  with  Mar- 


310  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

garet,  and  have  seen  how  comforting  was  her  presence  to 
the  poor  suffering  men.  For  each  one's  peculiar  taste 
she  had  a  care.  To  one  she  carried  books ;  to  another 
she  told  the  news  of  the  day ;  and  listened  to  another's 
oft-repeated  tale  of  wrongs,  as  the  best  sympathy  she  could 
give.  They  raised  themselves  on  their  elbows  to  get  a 
last  glimpse  of  her  as  she  went  away."  OssoK  was  sta- 
tioned with  his  command  on  the  walls  of  the  Vatican,  and 
in  great  danger.  He  refused  to  leave  his  post  even  for 
food  and  rest.  The  provisions  which  Margaret  sent  him 
he  shared  with  his  comrades.  Sometimes  she  could  visit 
him  at  his  post  and  talk  about  the  Httle  Angelo,  now  always 
in  her  thoughts.  iVs  the  wounded  men  were  brought  into 
the  hospital  she  was  always  expecting  to  see  her  husband ; 
and  as  the  nurse  had  threatened  to  abandon  the  babe,  and 
it  was  utterly  impossible  for  Margaret  to  get  outside  the 
lines  now  investing  the  city,  the  two  horrors  were  almost 
more  than  she  could  bear.  It  was  only  in  trying  to  help 
the  helpless  that  she  found  any  consolation  in  this  dreadful 
time.  The  night  of  the  20th  of  June,  the  French  effected 
an  entrance  into  the  city ;  and  although  the  defence  was 
gallantly  continued  until  the  30th,  there  was  really  no  hope 
for  the  patriots. 

At  that  time  Garibaldi  informed  the  Assembly  that  fur- 
ther resistance  would  be  useless.  The  French  occupation 
then  began,  and  the  end  of  all  liberties.  The  gates  once 
open,  Margaret,  with  all  her  sorrow  for  Rome,  was  happy 
in  the  thought  of  reaching  her  child.  She  did  reach  him 
just  in  time  to  save  his  hfe.  He  had  been  forsaken  by  his 
nurse,  and  his  mother  found  him  "worn  to  a  skeleton, 
too  weak  to  smile  or  lift  his  wasted  little  hand."  All  that 
Margaret  had  endured  seemed  slight  compared  to  this. 
She  could  but  compare  the  women  of  the  Papal  States  to 
wolves.  The  child,  however,  recovered  with  good  nursing, 
and  the  family,  now  united,  enjoyed  a  little  season  of  re- 
pose and  happiness.  The  marriage  was  announced,  and 
Margaret's  many  friends  in  Rome  extended  their  help  and 
sympathy.     Life  in  Italy  had  now  become  so  painful  to 


MARGARE T  FULLER.  3 1 1 

them  that  she  resolved  to  return  to  the  New  World.  Her 
husband  was  willing  to  accompany  her.  They  accordingly 
engaged  passage  upon  a  merchant-vessel  from  Leghorn, 
the  same  vessel  being  engaged  to  bring  over  the  hea\7 
marble  of  Powers's  "  Greek  Slave."  She  seemed  to  have 
great  forebodings  about  this  voyage,  and  was  almost  in- 
duced to  give  up  their  passage  on  the  vessel  at  the  last 
moment ;  but  she  overcame  her  fears,  and  they  embarked. 
After  a  few  days  the  captain  died  of  small-pox.  The  dis- 
ease spread ;  and  Margaret,  as  courageously  as  ever,  went 
about  the  ship  nursing  the  sick.  Soon  the  little  Angelo 
was  taken  with  the  dread  disease ;  they  nursed  him  safely 
through  it,  however,  and  after  many  dangers  and  trials 
the  vessel  arrived  off  the  Jersey  coast  in  thick  weather. 
At  night,  the  mate  promised  them  a  landing  in  New  York 
in  the  morning;  but  the  vessel  ran  upon  the  sand-bars 
near  Long  Island,  and  on  Fire  Island  beach  she  struck  at 
four  o'clock  on  the  morning  of  July  19.  Margaret,  with 
husband  and  child,  was  lost,  after  refusing  to  be  separated 
in  the  efforts  at  rescue.  They  went  down  together,  and 
the  career  of  a  great  and  noble  woman  ended  thus  tragi- 
cally on  that  desolate  coast. 


EDGAR   ALLAN    POE. 

AMONG  the  names  that  were  occasionally  mentioned 
in  the  brief  and  fleeting  annals  of  the  stage  from 
the  year  1798  to  the  year  181 1,  were  those  of  Mr.  David 
Poe  and  the  beautiful  Miss  Arnold  —  afterward  Mrs.  Poe, 
—  the  father  and  mother  of  that  most  brilliant  but  erratic 
genius  Edgar  A.  Poe. 

David  Poe  was  the  son  of  old  General  Poe,  who  won 
his  honors  in  Revolutionary  times  and  was  a  man  of 
sterling  character  and  many  heroic  qualities.  Miss  Arnold 
belonged  to  the  stage  by  birth,  and  from  earliest  youth  had 
been  attached  to  the  theatre  in  some  capacity.  It  is  a 
most  miserable  fate  for  a  child,  but  she  knew  of  nothing 
better.  She  came  before  the  public  with  a  naivete  that 
was  touching,  and  played  her  little  airs  on  the  piano  and 
sung  her  little  songs  and  uttered  her  childish  sentences 
always  to  the  very  best  of  her  abihty,  putting  up  with  the 
late  hours  and  the  hasty  and  often  scanty  meals  and  the 
general  discomfort  of  her  lot  with  the  utmost  amiability 
and  good-nature.  No  sheltered  home,  no  days  of  care- 
less pleasure,  no  constant  and  watchful  care  over  health 
or  manners  or  morals,  fell  to  her  lot ;  but  the  frowns  and 
sometimes  the  curses  of  the  older  actors,  the  ill-nature  of 
the  manager,  and  the  wearied  fretfulness  of  her  mother, 
who  was  growing  old  in  the  drudgery  of  her  profession,  — 
for  she  never  rose  above  that  at  any  time.  Nor  does  it 
appear  that  Miss  Arnold  had  any  particular  talent,  though 


EDGAR  ALLAN  FOE.  313 

she  won  a  moderate  share  of  favor  upon  the  stage ;  but 
she  was  always  much  esteemed  by  those  who  knew  her  in 
private.  She  sung  and  sometimes  danced,  as  did  her 
husband,  who  was  an  actor  of  inferior  merit.  There  is 
something  very  pathetic  in  the  story  of  the  httle  second- 
rate  actress  who  was  so  conscientious  and  so  persevering, 
and  one  cannot  but  hope  that  she  received  her  due  share 
of  the  applause  which  lends  such  a  fascination  to  the  life 
of  the  actor  that  he  rarely  abandons  it  for  any  other 
career. 

There  is  a  hint  of  the  hardship  of  her  life  in  the  fact 
that  there  are  but  three  short  breaks  in  her  dramatic  ca- 
reer through  all  those  years,  —  the  times  when  the  three 
children  were  born  to  them.  Edgar  was  bom  Jan.  19, 
1809,  and  his  mother  appeared  upon  the  stage  again 
February  10,  and  played  to  the  end  of  the  season  almost 
incessantly.  The  family  were  poor  to  the  verge  of  desti- 
tution at  all  times,  and  the  little  woman  had  need  of  a 
brave  heart  when  the  children  came  crowding  into  the 
poor  unfurnished  nest.  One  cannot  doubt  that  there  was 
much  of  pain  and  worry  in  the  little  creature's  heart  before 
the  birth  of  Edgar ;  and  no  doubt  the  paint  covered  the 
traces  of  many  tears  on  the  faded  cheeks,  and  the  smiles 
which  wreathed  her  face  were  more  artificial  than  the 
usual  stage  smiles  during  all  those  weary  months.  In 
181 1  she  and  her  husband  were  playing  in  Richmond, 
when  her  health  failed  her,  and  they  were  brought  to 
great  straits  for  the  means  of  hfe.  The  actors  gave  her  a 
benefit,  but  the  receipts  were  small,  and  the  following 
card  was  inserted  in  the  Richmond  papers  :  — 

"To  THE  Humane  :  On  this  night  Mrs.  Poe,  lingering  on 
the  bed  of  disease  and  surrounded  by  her  children,  asks  your 
assistance  ;  and  asks  it,  perhaps^  for  the  last  time.''^ 

Before  the  second  benefit  night  the  Richmond  ladies 
had  come  to  her  relief,  and  she  was  tenderly  cared  for  dur- 
ing the  brief  remainder  of  her  hfe  by  stranger  hands.  She 
had  never  had  a  home.     She  had  passed  her  whole  life  in 


314  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

poor,  mean  lodgings,  about  which  no  household  charm 
could  linger.  In  these  desolate  places  had  been  passed 
even  her  honeymoon ;  in  some  garret  lodgings  had  her 
children  been  born ;  here  all  that  she  had  known  of  do- 
mestic joy  or  sorrow  had  been  enacted  ;  here  she  had 
doubtless  wept  her  hot  tears  and  had  her  little  triumphs, 
and  here  she  had  died.  Poor  little  variety-actress  of  the 
olden  time  !  there  is  one  heart  at  least  that  is  touched  by 
your  lot,  even  at  this  distant  day,  and  has  dropped  a  tear 
to  your  memory  on  the  page  where  she  has  read  your 
history. 

The  three  children  were  cared  for  by  the  kind  people 
of  Richmond,  and  Edgar  was  adopted  by  Mrs.  John  Allan, 
whose  husband  gave  but  a  reluctant  consent  to  the  arrange- 
ment. Edgar  was  a  most  beautiful  and  precocious  child, 
and  attracted  much  attention  in  the  new  home.  If  the 
poor  mother  on  her  dying-bed  could  have  known  of  the 
good  fortune  which  awaited  him,  it  would  have  eased  some- 
what the  bitter  pangs  of  her  parting  with  her  beautiful  and 
idolized  child.  He  was  taken  to  England,  where  he  spent 
several  years  of  his  childhood,  and  when  he  returned,  en- 
tered a  classical  school,  where  he  was  prepared  for  college. 
He  was  described  as  "  self-willed,  capricious,  inclined  to  be 
imperious,  and,  though  of  generous  impulses,  not  steadily 
kind  or  even  amiable."  He  was  a  facile  scholar  and  fond 
of  Latin  and  English  poetry.  He  was  nearly  always  alone, 
making  few  friends  among  his  schoolmates,  and  was  of  a 
dignified  and  reserved  disposition  and  inclined  to  melan- 
choly. He  entered  the  University  of  Virginia  at  the  age 
of  seventeen,  and  it  was  here  that  his  fatal  habit  of  drink- 
ing was  first  formed.     One  of  his  schoolmates  writes  :  — 


"  Poe's  passion  for  strong  drink  was  as  marked  and  pecu- 
liar as  that  for  cards.  It  was  not  the  taste  of  the  beverage 
that  influenced  him.  Without  a  sip  or  smack  of  the  mouth 
he  would  seize  a  full  glass,  without  water  or  sugar,  and  send 
it  home  at  a  single  gulp.  This  frequently  used  him  up  ;  but 
if  not,  he  rarely  returned  to  the  charge." 


EDGAR  ALLAN  FOE.  315 

This,  for  a  lad  of  seventeen,  with  an  excitable  tempera- 
ment, was  sufficient  to  sow  the  seeds  of  all  his  future 
woe.  The  youthful  brain  inflamed  with  alcohol  never 
really  recovers  its  normal  condition,  even  when  absti- 
nence follows,  and  Poe's  life-long  struggle  with  his  adver- 
sary began  at  this  tender  age.  Dr.  Day,  long  connected 
with  the  inebriate  asylum  at  Binghamton,  N.  Y.,  once 
had  an  opportunity  to  examine  the  brain  of  a  man  who, 
after  having  been  a  drunkard,  reformed  and  lived  for  some 
years  as  a  teetotaller.  He  found  to  his  surprise  that  the 
globules  of  the  brain  had  not  shrunk  to  their  natural  size. 
They  did  not  exhibit  the  inflammation  of  the  drunkard's 
brain,  but  they  were  still  enlarged,  and  seemed  ready  on 
the  instant  to  absorb  the  fumes  of  alcohol  and  resume  their 
former  condition.  He  thought  he  saw  in  this  morbid  con- 
dition of  the  brain  the  physical  part  of  the  reason  why  a 
man  who  has  once  been  habituated  to  hquor  falls  so  easily 
under  its  sway  again  in  spite  of  every  moral  reason  for  re- 
fraining. Doubtless  he  was  right,  and  poor  Poe  was  only 
one  of  a  vast  number  of  men  of  brilUant  intellects  and  kind 
hearts,  who  after  a  life-long  struggle  are  defeated  by  the 
enemy  they  have  taken  into  their  stomachs  to  destroy 
their  brains. 

It  is  not  our  purpose  to  trace  the  poet  through  all  the 
devious  windings  of  his  life,  but  to  dwell  for  a  little  while 
upon  the  course  of  his  domestic  life  and  give  some  of  the 
striking  points  in  his  character.  We  will  pass  over  the 
close  of  his  college  career  and  the  episode  at  West  Point, 
as  well  as  the  publication  of  his  earHest  volume  of  poems, 
and  look  at  him  as  we  find  him  in  the  summer  of  1833, 
living  in  Baltimore.  He  had  a  home  here  with  his  father's 
widowed  sister,  Mrs.  Clemm,  who  with  her  daughter  Vir- 
ginia lived  in  a  very  humble  way  in  that  city.  The  little 
Poe  could  earn  —  for  he  was  then  at  one  of  his  lowest 
financial  periods — went  into  the  common  stock,  and  the 
three  struggled  along  together.  Virginia  was  a  child  of 
eleven,  beautiful,  delicate,  refined ;  and  Mrs.  Clemm  was 
then,  as  always  thereafter,  the  best  and  kindest  of  friends 


3t6 


HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 


to  the  poet.  She  had  Uttle  to  offer  him,  save  kindness 
and  motherly  love ;  but  she  gave  these  most  abundantly, 
and  they  were  of  priceless  value  to  Poe.  For  many 
months  he  kept  himself  from  his  besetting  sin,  and  worked 
faithfully  at  whatever  literary  work  he  could  get  to  do. 
But  he  was  poor  to  the  point  of  destitution,  and  the  men- 
tal strain  upon  him  was  great,  with  his  extraordinary  pride 
and  sensitiveness.  He  had  been  well  reared,  with  fine 
and  deHcate  tastes,  and  accustomed  to  money  ;  and  priva- 
tion was  very  bitter  to  him.  He  was  naturally  an  aristo- 
crat, too,  and  found  in  the  associations  to  which  he  was 
almost  compelled  by  poverty  a  heavy  cross.  At  the  end 
of  two  years  he  felt  himself  forced  to  leave  Baltimore, 
and  thought  he  could  obtain  employment  in  Richmond. 
He  had  become  greatly  attached  to  Virginia,  and  she  was 
equally  so  to  him ;  and  although  she  was  but  a  child  of 
thirteen,  Poe  proposed  to  marry  her  and  take  her  and 
Mrs.  Clemm  with  him  to  his  new  destination.  The  youth 
of  Virginia  seems  to  have  been  the  only  obstacle  in  the 
mind  of  Mrs.  Clemm,  who  had  conceived  the  deepest 
affection  for  Poe  and  had  great  confidence  in  his  abilities. 
She  was  friendless  and  unable  to  take  care  of  herself  and 
her  daughter,  and  after  some  hesitation  she  consented  to 
the  marriage.  It  did  not  take  place,  however,  till  Vir- 
ginia was  fourteen  years  old. 

Ill-starred  and  ill-timed  as  this  marriage  seemed  to  be, 
it  was  the  one  bright  and  beautiful  thing  about  the  life  of 
Poe.  He  remained  passionately  devoted  to  the  youthful 
wife  as  long  as  she  lived ;  and  it  is  thought  by  those 
who  knew  him  best  that,  despite  his  numerous  romantic 
passages  with  ladies  after  her  death,  Virginia  was  the 
only  woman  he  ever  really  loved.  In  spite  of  the 
bad  habits  which  clung  to  him  so  persistently,  he  seems 
to  have  been  a  really  kind  and  devoted  husband  to  the 
end.  She,  on  her  part,  worshipped  him  with  a  supreme 
infatuation  that  was  blind  to  all  his  faults.  The  ro- 
mance of  the  first  months  of  married  life  seemed  never 
to  wear  off,  and  through  all  their  sorrows  —  and  they 


EDGAR  ALLAN  FOE.  317 

were  many  and   bitter  —  their  love   burned   as   brightly 
as  at  first. 

To  Mrs.  Clemm,  also,  Poe  was  always  a  devoted  son,  and 
through  all  his  waywardness  and  folly  and  sin  she  clung 
to  him  with  the  devotion  of  a  true  mother.  The  sturdy 
figure  of  this  woman  shows  through  all  the  dark  spots  of 
his  life,  casting  a  gleam  of  brightness.  She  was  a  strong, 
masculine-looking  woman,  full  of  energy,  and  took  upon 
herself  all  the  practical  affairs  of  the  little  household.  She 
received  the  money  from  Poe,  and  expended  it  in  her  own 
way ;  and  she  had  a  faculty  of  getting  a  good  deal  of  com- 
fort out  of  a  very  little  money.  So  their  home  was  almost 
always  comfortable,  even  when  they  were  poorest.  And 
she  never  gave  way  to  reproaches,  even  when  Poe  was  at  his 
worst.  She  seemed  to  consider  his  failing  only  in  the 
light  of  a  misfortune,  and  never  blamed  but  always  pitied 
him.  She  worshipped  his  genius  almost  as  blindly  as  did 
Virginia,  and  it  is  pleasant  to  think  that  with  all  their 
misfortunes  and  privations,  they  had  much  real  happiness 
in  their  little  home.  Poe  was  very  proud  and  very  fond 
of  Virginia,  and  liked  to  take  strangers  to  see  her.  She 
had  a  voice  of  wonderful  sweetness  and  sung  exquisitely, 
and  in  some  of  their  more  prosperous  days  she  had  her 
harp  and  piano.  One  evening  when  she  was  singing  she 
ruptured  a  blood-vessel,  and  for  a  time  her  life  was  de- 
spaired of.  Poe  describes  the  affliction  long  afterwards 
in  a  letter  as  follows  :  — 

"  Six  years  ago  a  wife  whom  I  loved  as  no  man  ever  loved 
before,  ruptured  a  blood-vessel  in  singing.  I  took  leave  of- 
her  forever,  and  underwent  all  the  agonies  of  her  death.  She 
recovered  partially,  and  I  again  hoped.  At  the  end  of  a 
year  the  vessel  again  broke.  I  went  through  precisely  the 
same  scene.  Then  again  —  again  —  and  even  once  again  at 
varying  intervals.  Each  time  I  felt  all  the  agonies  of  her 
death,  and  at  each  accession  of  the  disorder  I  loved  her 
more  dearly  and  clung  to  her  life  with  more  desperate  perti- 
nacity. But  I  am  constitutionally  sensitive,  —  nervous  to  an 
unusual  degree.     I   became  insane,  with  long  intervals  of 


3i8  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

possible  sanity.  During  these  fits  of  absolute  unconscious- 
ness, I  drank — God  only  knows  how  often  or  how  much. 
As  a  matter  of  course,  my  enemies  referred  the  insanity  to 
the  drink,  rather  than  the  drink  to  the  insanity." 

Although  Poe's  word  is  not  always  to  be  taken  in  re- 
gard to  his  own  affairs,  this  doubtless  describes  his  feel- 
ings over  Virginia's  condition  quite  truthfully ;  and  whether 
the  drinking  was  cause  or  effect  we  shall  probably  never 
really  know. 

During  one  of  the  periods  of  Virginia's  improved  health 
Poe  took  her  and  went  to  New  York,  leaving  Mrs.  Clemm 
behind  to  settle  up  domestic  affairs.  In  a  letter  which  he 
wrote  to  his  mother-in-law,  we  have  a  glimpse  of  the  kind- 
lier side  of  the  man's  nature  and  of  his  real  affection  for 
this  devoted  friend,  as  well  as  some  hints  of  the  straits  of 
poverty  to  which  they  had  been  accustomed,  by  the  ful- 
ness of  his  descriptions  of  the  plenty  upon  which  they 
had  fallen.     He  is  speaking  of  his  boarding-house  :  — 

"  I  wish  Catarina  [the  cat]  could  see  it ;  she  would  faint. 
Last  night  for  supper  we  had  the  nicest  tea  you  ever  drank, 
—  strong  and  hot,  —  wheat  and  rye  bread,  cheese,  tea-cakes 
(elegant  —  a  great  dish),  two  dishes  of  elegant  ham  and  two 
of  cold  veal,  piled  up  like  a  mountain  and  large  slices,  three 
dishes  of  the  cakes,  and  everything  in  the  greatest  profusion. 
No  fear  of  starving  here.  The  landlady  seemed  as  if  she 
could  n't  press  us  enough,  and  we  were  at  home  directly. 
For  breakfast  we  had  excellent-flavored  coffee,  hot  and 
strong,  —  not  very  clear  and  no  great  deal  of  cream,  —  veal- 
cutlets,  elegant  ham  and  eggs,  and  nice  bread  and  butter. 
I  never  sat  down  to  a  more  plentiful  or  a  nicer  breakfast.  I 
wish  you  could  have  seen  the  eggs  and  the  great  dishes  of 
meat.  Sis  is  delighted,  and  we  are  both  in  excellent  spirits. 
She  has  coughed  hardly  any,  and  had  no  night-sweat.  She 
is  now  busy  mending  my  pants,  which  I  tore  against  a  nail. 
I  went  out  last  night  and  bought  a  skein  of  silk,  a  skein  of 
thread,  two  buttons,  a  pair  of  slippers,  and  a  tin  pan  for  the 
stove.  The  fire  kept  all  night.  We  have  now  got  four  dol- 
lars and  a  half  left.  To-morrow  I  am  going  to  try  and  bor- 
row three  dollars,  so  that  I  may  have  a  fortnight  to  go  upon. 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE.  3T9 

I  feel  in  excellent  spirits,  and  haven't  drank  a  drop  —  so 
that  I  hope  soon  to  get  out  of  trouble.  The  very  instant  I 
scrape  together  enough  money  I  will  send  it  on.  You  can't 
imagine  how  much  we  both  do  miss  you.  Sissy  had  a  hearty 
cry  last  night  because  you  and  Catarina  were  n't  here.  We 
hope  to  send  for  you  very  soon." 

It  is  hard  to  read  of  the  straits  to  which  Poe  was  often 
reduced  for  a  little  money,  and  to  know  that  all  this  time 
he  was  writing  those  immortal  tales  which  would  now 
make  a  man's  fortune  as  soon  as  produced.  It  is  true 
that  he  had  two  or  three  times  good  salaried  positions,  — 
good  for  that  day,  —  but  he  never  kept  them  long,  and 
his  chronic  state  was  one  of  poverty,  if  not  of  destitution. 

Mrs.  Osgood,  who  knew  him  in  the  later  days  in  New 
York,  says  of  him  :  — 

"  I  have  never  seen  him  otherwise  than  gentle,  generous, 
well-bred,  and  fastidiously  refined.  To  a  sensitive  and  deli- 
cately nurtured  woman  there  was  a  peculiar  and  irresistible 
charm  in  the  chivalric,  graceful,  and  almost  tender  reverence 
with  which  he  invariably  approached  all  women  who  won  his 
respect." 

The  home  in  the  suburbs  where  he  lived  in  the  last 
days  of  his  wife's  life  is  described  as  a  story- an d-a-half 
house  at  the  top  of  Fordham  Hill.  Within  on  the  ground 
floor  were  two  small  apartments,  —  a  kitchen  and  sitting- 
room,  —  and  above,  up  a  narrow  stairway,  two  others,  one 
Poe's  room,  —  a  low,  cramped  chamber  hghted  by  little 
square  windows  like  port-holes,  —  the  other  a  diminutive 
closet  of  a  bedroom,  hardly  large  enough  to  lie  down  in. 
The  furnishing  was  of  the  scantiest,  but  everything  fault- 
lessly neat. 

"  Mrs.  Clemm,  now  over  sixty,  in  her  worn  black  dress 
made  upon  all  who  saw  her  an  impression  of  dignity,  refine- 
ment, and  deep  motherly  devotion  to  her  children.  Virginia, 
at  the  age  of  twenty-five,  retained  her  beauty,  but  the  large 
black  eyes  and  raven  hair  contrasted  sadly  with  the  pallor  of 


320  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

her  face.  Poe  himself,  poor,  proud,  and  ill,  anticipating  grief 
and  nursing  the  bitterness  that  springs  from  helplessness  in 
the  sight  of  suffering  borne  by  those  dear  to  us,  was  restless 
and  variable,  the  creature  of  contradictory  impulses." 

Virginia  now  failed  rapidly,  Poe  was  ill,  and  the  house- 
hold was  reduced  almost  to  the  starving-point.  Winter 
was  upon  them ;  and  when  at  last  a  sympathizing  friend 
found  them  she  thus  describes  the  situation  :  — 

"There  was  no  clothing  upon  the  bed,  which  was  only 
straw,  but  a  snow-white  counterpane  and  sheets.  The 
weather  was  cold,  and  the  sick  lady  had  the  dreadful  chills 
that  accompany  the  hectic  fever  of  consumption.  She  lay 
on  the  straw  bed  wrapped  in  her  husband's  great-coat,  with 
a  large  tortoise-shell  cat  in  her  bosom.  The  wonderful  cat 
seemed  conscious  of  her  great  usefulness.  The  coat  and 
the  cat  were  the  sufferer's  only  means  of  warmth,  except  as 
her  husband  held  her  hands  and  her  mother  her  feet.  Mrs. 
Clemm  was  passionately  fond  of  her  daughter,  and  her  dis- 
tress on  account  of  her  illness  and  poverty  and  misery  was 
dreadful  to  see." 

This  friend  at  once  interested  some  benevolent  people 
in  the  case,  and  poor  Virginia's  last  days  were  made  com- 
fortable by  their  aid.  Poe's  heart  seemed  filled  with  in- 
expressible gratitude  to  all  who  aided  him  in  this  sorest 
crisis  of  his  hfe  ;  and  although  he  was  much  broken  by  his 
loss,  he  ralHed  once  more  and  was  sober  and  industrious 
for  a  time.  Mrs.  Clemm  stood  faithfully  by  him,  and 
even  watched  over  him  through  some  of  the  fearful  sea- 
sons of  delirium  which  followed  his  complete  giving  up  to 
the  habits  of  drinking  and  of  taking  opium. 

Of  the  final  scenes  of  this  unhappy  life  it  is  needless  to 
write.  They  have  been  often  described,  and  though  the 
accounts  vary,  the  sum  and  substance  are  the  same.  Poe 
was  attacked  with  delirium-tremens  in  Baltimore,  and  died 
in  a  hospital  in  that  city  in  October,  1849.  Beautiful, 
gifted,  and  sensitive,  proud,  ambitious,  and  daring,  en- 
dowed with  a  subtle  charm  of  manner  as  well  as  of  person. 


EDGAR  ALLAN-  FOE. 


321 


amiable  and  generous  in  his  home  life,  loyal  and  devoted 
to  his  family,  a  very  pleasing  picture  is  presented  of 
the  man  if  we  look  but  on  this  side.  Could  he  have 
overcome  the  fatal  fascination  of  drink,  we  might  never 
have  seen  the  reverse  side  of  all  this.  As  it  is,  let  us 
cover  his  follies  with  our  mantle  of  charity  and  dwell  only 
upon  his  genius  and  his  virtues. 


21 


WILLIAM    MAKEPEACE   THACKERAY. 

DURING  a  portion  of  Thackeray's  life  there  seemed 
to  be  in  the  public  mind  a  complete  misappre- 
hension of  the  character  of  the  man.  Superficial  readers 
of  his  books,  who  knew  nothing  of  him  personally,  were 
fond  of  applying  the  name  of  cynic  to  him ;  and  he  was 
even  accused  by  some  of  these  of  being  a  hater  of  his 
kind,  a  misanthropist,  a  bitter  satirist,  a  hard,  ungenial 
man. 

As  no  adequate  personal  memoir  of  him  has  ever  been 
written,  it  being  understood  by  his  family  that  such  a  pub- 
Hcation  would  have  been  distasteful  to  him,  it  has  taken 
time  to  correct  all  the  false  impressions  that  have  gained 
credence  in  regard  to  the  great  humorist ;  but  at  the  pres- 
ent time  his  character  has  been  practically  cleared  of  the 
former  false  charges.  As  one  by  one  the  friends  who 
knew  him  personally  have  spoken,  it  has  been  discovered 
that  this  cynic  was  one  of  the  tenderest  and  kindest  men 
that  our  time  has  produced  ;  this  hater  of  his  kind,  a  man 
so  soft-hearted  and  full  of  sensibility  that  it  was  really  a 
serious  drawback  to  him  in  life ;  this  misanthropist,  one 
of  the  most  genial  and  kindly  companions  in  the  world ; 
this  bitter  satirist,  a  man  who  never  made  an  enemy  by 
his  speech ;  this  hard  man,  one  who  actually  threw  money 
away,  as  all  his  friends  thought,  by  bestowing  it  upon  every 
applicant  whether  he  could  aiford  it  or  not. 


WILLIAM  MAKEPEACE    THACKERAY.        323 

So  great  a  change  in  the  world's  estimate  of  a  man  has 
seldom  been  made  after  the  man's  death.  It  is  to  be  ac- 
comited  for  by  the  fact  that  while  he  was  living  his  friends 
never  told  what  they  knew  of  him,  and  that  only  very 
gradually  did  they  reveal  his  virtues,  even  after  he  had 
gone,  feeling  always  that  he  would  have  preferred  them  to 
be  silent ;  and  by  the  other  fact  that  he  often  appeared 
other  than  he  was,  to  cover  up  his  excessive  sensibility,  of 
which  he  was  very  much  ashamed. 

The  world  will  come  to  a  truer  knowledge  of  him  still 
some  day ;  and  then  it  will  be  found  what  a  great,  loving, 
noble  heart  was  hidden  behind  his  thin  crust  of  cynicism, 
—  what  gentleness,  what  tenderness,  what  wise  kindness  he 
was  capable  of,  —  what  loyalty  to  his  friends  and  to  his 
principles,  what  reverence  for  sacred  things,  what  infinite 
depths  of  pathos,  lay  beneath  that  mocking  exterior.  Let 
us  gather  together  a  few  of  these  personal  traits  as  they 
have  been  given  us  by  different  hands,  and  try  to  make 
thus  a  true  likeness  of  the  man  as  he  appeared  to  those 
who  knew  him  best.  The  events  of  his  life  were  few  and 
by  no  means  striking. 

He  was  bom  in  Calcutta  in  181 1,  and  brought  to  Eng- 
land when  six  years  of  age.  At  eleven  he  was  placed  in 
Charter- House  School,  where  he  is  described  as  a  rosy- 
faced  boy,  with  dark  curling  hair,  and  a  quick  intelligent 
eye,  ever  twinkling  with  good-humor.  For  the  usual 
school  sports  he  had  no  taste,  and  was  only  known  to  en- 
joy theatricals  and  caricatures,  for  which  he  retained  his 
taste  throughout  life.  He  was  wonderfully  social  and 
vivacious,  and  the  best  of  good  company,  even  at  this 
early  day.  Merry,  light-hearted,  unselfish,  not  very  in- 
dustrious, but  a  fair  classical  scholar,  and  possessed  of  a 
wonderful  memory,  —  so  he  is  remembered  by  those  who 
knew  him  at  this  time.  In  a  great  school,  where  nearly 
all  the  boys  bullied  those  who  were  beneath  them,  he  was 
noted  for  his  invariable  kindness  to  the  smaller  boys,  and 
it  was  remarked  of  him,  even  at  this  age,  that  for  one  who 
had  such  powers  of  sarcasm  he  made  very  few  wounds 


324  HOME  LIFE  OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

by  his  tongue.  At  eighteen  he  entered  Cambridge  Uni- 
versity, but  left  it  at  nineteen  and  went  to  study  art  in  Paris. 
Here  he  remained  for  several  years,  and  began  his  literary 
work.  Here,  too,  he  was  married,  when  twenty-six  years 
of  age,  to  Miss  Isabella  Shawe,  and  here  they  passed  the 
first  happy  days  of  their  married  life  together.  He  has 
himself  sketched  a  picture  of  the  time,  in  these  words  : — 

*'  The  humblest  painter,  be  he  ever  so  poor,  may  have  a 
friend  watching  at  his  easel,  or  a  gentle  wife  sitting  by  with 
her  work  in  her  lap,  and  with  fond  smiles  or  silence,  or  both, 
cheering  his  labors." 

For  a  few  short  years  they  were  very  happy  together, 
and  three  children  were  born  to  them.  Then  the  most 
terrible  misfortune  of  his  hfe  fell  upon  him,  — his  wife,  after 
a  severe  illness,  became  hopelessly  insane.  For  some  time 
Thackeray  refused  to  believe  that  it  was  more  than  an 
illness  from  which  she  would  recover,  but  at  last  the  terri- 
ble truth  was  forced  upon  him  that  he  had  lost  her  for- 
ever, and  in  a  way  so  much  more  cruel  than  death.  She 
was  placed  in  the  home  of  a  kind  family  employed  to 
care  for  her,  and  there  she  remained  until  death  released 
her.  His  grief  was  of  the  most  hopeless  kind,  and  it 
made  a  melancholy  man  of  him  throughout  life.  At 
times  and  seasons  his  natural  gayety  would  return  to  him ; 
but  he  was  a  sad  man  at  heart  from  that  dreadful  day 
when  the  horror  of  her  fate  was  revealed  to  him.  He 
never  spoke  directly  of  his  grief,  but  once  in  a  while  he 
would  speak  of  it  in  parable,  as  when  he  talked  to  a 
friend  about  somebody's  wife  whom  he  had  known  be- 
coming insane,  and  that  friend  says  :  — 

"Never  shall  I  forget  the  look,  the  manner,  the  voice, 
with  which  he  said  to  me,  *  It  is  an  awful  thing  for  her  to  con- 
tinue to  live.  It  is  awful  for  her  so  to  die.  But  has  it  ever 
occurred  to  you  how  awful  the  recovery  of  her  lost  reason 
would  be,  without  the  consciousness  of  the  loss  of  time  ? 
She  finds  the  lover  of  her  youth  a  gray-haired  old  man,  and 


WILLIAM  MAKEPEACE    THACKERAY.  325 

her  infants  young  men  and  women.      Is  it  not  sad  to  think 
of  this  ? ' " 

His  mother  came  to  hve  with  him,  and  his  children  grew 
to  maturity  beneath  his  roof,  one  of  them  the  Miss  Thack- 
eray now  so  well  known  as  a  novelist.  But  tenderly  as  he 
was  attached  to  them,  —  and  there  could  have  been  no 
fonder  father, — he  no  doubt  felt  all  the  sadness  of  the 
thought  that 

"  The  many  make  the-household, 
But  only  one  the  home." 

In  one  of  the  "  Roundabouts  "  he  says  :  — 

"  I  own,  for  my  part,  that  in  reading  papers  which  this  hand 
formerly  penned,  I  often  lose  sight  of  the  text  under  my 
eyes.  It  is  not  the  words  I  see,  but  that  past  day,  that  by- 
gone page  of  life's  history,  that  tragedy  —  comedy  it  may  be 
—  which  our  little  home  company  were  enacting,  that  merry- 
making which  we  shared,  that  funeral  which  we  followed, 
that  bitter,  bitter  grief  which  we  buried." 

That  he  should  live  much  in  that  vanished  past,  was  but 
natural ;  yet  it  was  hard  for  a  man  Hke  Thackeray,  who 
had  naturally  such  great  capacity  for  the  enjoyment  of 
life. 

That  his  home  was  a  pleasant  and  goodly  place,  all 
who  have  ever  visited  it  bear  witness.  He  made  it  his 
refuge  from  all  outer  troubles,  and  practised  a  genial  and 
kindly  hospitahty  there.  It  was  a  long  time  before  he 
was  able  to  buy  a  house,  though  he  made  a  good  deal  of 
money  from  his  books,  his  free-handed  generous  ways 
always  keeping  him  back  financially:  but  when  he  was 
enabled  to  buy  one,  he  took  great  pride  and  pleasure  in 
it,  and  decorated  it  according  to  his  artistic  tastes.  To 
make  a  little  more  money  for  his  daughters,  that  they  might 
be  independent  when  he  was  gone,  he  began  lecturing, 
and  was  twice  induced  to  come  to  America  for  that  pur- 
pose, much  as  he  dreaded  leaving  home,  and  especially 
crossing  the  ocean. 


326  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

His  speech  at  the  farewell  dinner  given  him  before 
leaving  for  America  the  last  time,  expressed  this  dread 
in  a  very  comical  manner,  and  was  received  with  great 
cheering  and  uproar.  "  I  have  before  me,"  he  said,  *'  at 
this  minute  the  horrid  figure  of  a  steward  with  a  basin 
perhaps,  or  a  glass  of  brandy  and  water,  which  he  will 
press  me  to  drink,  and  which  I  shall  try  to  swallow,  and 
which  won't  make  me  any  better.  I  know  it  won't."  This 
with  a  grimace  which  put  the  whole  table  in  a  roar.  Then 
he  went  on  to  tell  of  the  last  dinners  given  to  criminals 
and  convicts,  and  how  they  were  allowed  always  to  choose 
what  they  would  have,  in  a  manner  so  droll  that  all 
thought  him  in  the  happiest  mood,  while  he  was  scarcely 
able  to  keep  up,  so  sad  was  his  heart  at  the  prospect 
of  leaving  home.  Next  morning,  we  are  told  by  a  spec- 
tator, "  he  had  been  round  crying  in  corners ;  and  when 
the  cab  finally  came,  and  the  luggage  had  all  been  be- 
stowed, and  the  servants  stood  in  the  hall,  'This  is  the 
moment  I  have  dreaded,'  said  Thackeray,  as  he  entered 
the  dining-room  to  embrace  his  daughters,  and  when  he 
hastily  descended  the  steps  to  the  door,  he  knew  that 
they  would  be  at  the  window  to  cast  one  loving,  Hngering 
look.  'Good-by,'  he  murmured  in  a  suppressed  tone, 
'  keep  close  behind  me,  and  try  to  let  me  jump  in  unseen.' 
The  instant  the  door  of  the  vehicle  closed  behind  him, 
he  threw  himself  back  in  the  corner,  and  buried  his  face 
in  his  hands." 

His  allusion  to  his  Httle  girls,  in  the  poem  of  "The 
White  Squall,"  is  well  known,  and  shows  how  constantly 
he  had  them  in  his  thoughts  :  — 

"  And  when,  its  force  expended, 
The  harmless  storm  was  ended, 
And  as  the  sunrise  splendid 
Came  blushing  o'er  the  sea, 
I  thought,  as  day  was  breaking, 
My  little  girls  were  waking, 
And  smiling,  and  making 
A  prayer  at  home  for  me." 

His  love  for  these  little  girls,  to  whom  he  felt  he  must 


WILLIAM  MAKEPEACE    THACKERAY.        327 

be  both  father  and  mother,  gave  him  unusual  tenderness 
for  all  children,  and  he  once  said  he  never  could  see  a 
boy  without  wanting  to  give  him  a  sovereign.  This  he  did 
very  often  too  in  England,  where  children,  like  servants, 
are  allowed  to  receive  "tips"  from  their  parents'  friends; 
and  when  in  this  country  he  felt  it  quite  a  hardship  that 
the  children  of  his  friends  were  not  allowed  to  take  his 
money. 

His  American  visits  afforded  him  much  pleasure  — 
and  profit  too ;  and  he  always  spoke  kindly  of  us 
after  his  return.  His  light  way  of  expressing  his  feeling 
towards  us  was  extremely  characteristic,  as  when  he  said 
he  hoped  he  should  never  be  guilty  of  speaking  ill 
either  of  the  North  or  the  South,  as  he  had  been  offered 
equally  good  claret  by  both.  His  frequent  allusions  to 
eating  and  drinking  give  the  idea  of  a  much  more  con- 
vivial person  than  he  really  was ;  he  was  temperate  in 
both,  but  he  loved  to  write  of  these  things.  In  the 
*'  Memorials  of  Gormandizing,"  he  writes  in  the  most 
appetizing  manner  of  all  the  good  dinners  he  has  eaten 
in  many  lands.  Each  dinner  is  an  epic  of  the  table. 
They  make  one  hungry  with  an  inappeasable  hunger, 
and  make  him  long  to  have  Thackeray  at  his  own 
board  as  a  most  appreciative  guest.  He  was  quite  a 
diner-out  in  London,  and  a  great  favorite  wherever  he 
went.  He  was  not  one  of  the  professional  talkers,  but 
always  had  one  or  two  good  things  to  say,  which  he  did 
not  repeat  until  they  were  stereotyped,  as  so  many  do. 
Though  he  said  witty  things  now  and  then,  he  was  not  a 
wit  in  the  sense  that  Jerrold  was.  He  shone  most  in  little 
subtle  remarks  on  life,  little  off-hand  sketches  of  char- 
acter, and  descriptive  touches  of  men  and  things.  He 
could  be  uproariously  funny  on  occasion,  and  even  sing 
his  "  Jolly  Doctor  Luther  "  at  table  to  a  congenial  com- 
pany ;  but  he  was  often  very  dignified,  and  always  gen- 
tlemanly. The  bits  of  doggerel  with  which  he  was 
wont  to  diversify  his  conversation  are  spoken  of  by  all 
his  friends  as  irresistibly  ludicrous,  and  he  seems  to  have 


328  HOME  LIFE  OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

indulged  in  this  pastime  from  a  boy,  as  he  did  in  those  of 
caricaturing  and  parodying.     Mr.  Fields  tells  us  that  — 

"  In  the  midst  of  the  most  serious  topic  under  discussion 
he  was  fond  of  asking  permission  to  sing  a  comic  song,  or 
he  would  beg  to  be  allowed  to  enliven  the  occasion  by  the 
instant  introduction  of  a  double  shuffle.  .  .  .  During  his 
first  visit  to  America  his  jollity  knew  no  bounds,  and  it 
became  necessary  often  to  repress  him  when  walking  in 
the  street.  I  well  remember  his  uproarious  shouting  and 
dancing  when  he  was  told  that  the  tickets  to  his  first  course 
of  readings  were  all  sold  ;  and  when  we  rode  together  from 
his  hotel  to  the  lecture-hall,  he  insisted  on  thrusting  both 
his  long  legs  out  of  the  carriage  window,  in  deference,  as 
he  said,  to  his  magnanimous  ticket-holders." 

Some  of  his  fun  was  a  little  embarrassing  to  his  friends, 
as  when  Mr.  Fields  had  taken  him  to  the  meeting  of  a 
scientific  club  at  the  house  of  a  distinguished  Boston 
gentleman,  and  Thackeray,  being  bored  by  the  proceed- 
ings, stole  into  a  little  anteroom,  where  he  thought  no 
one  could  see  him  but  his  friend,  and  proceeded  to 
give  vent  to   his   feelings  in  pantomime. 

"  He  threw  an  imaginary  person  (myself,  of  course)  upon 
the  floor,  and  proceeded  to  stab  him  several  times  with  a 
paper-folder  which  he  caught  up  for  that  purpose.  After 
disposing  of  his  victim  in  this  way,  he  was  not  satisfied,  for 
the  dull  lecture  still  went  on  in  the  other  room,  and  he  fired 
an  imaginary  revolver  several  times  at  an  imaginary  head  ; 
still  the  droning  speaker  proceeded ;  and  now  began  the 
greatest  pantomimic  scene  of  all,  namely,  murder  by  poison, 
after  the  manner  in  which  the  pla)^er  King  is  disposed  of 
in  '  Hamlet.'  Thackeray  had  found  a  small  phial  on  the 
mantel-shelf,  and  out  of  it  he  proceeded  to  pour  the  imagi- 
nary 'juice  of  cursed  hebenon  '  into  the  imaginary  porches 
of  somebody's  ears.  The  whole  thing  was  inimitably  done, 
and  I  hoped  nobody  saw  it  but  myself;  but  years  afterwards 
a  ponderous  fat-witted  young  man  put  the  question  squarely 
to  me  :  '  What  was  the  matter  with  Mr.  Thackeray  that 
night  the  club  met  at  M 's  house  ? '  " 


WILLIAM  MAKEPEACE    THACKERAY.         329 

Thackeray's  playfulness  was  indeed  a  marked  pecu- 
liarity, and  innumerable  stories  are  told  of  his  dancing 
pirouettes,  singing  impromptu  songs,  and  rhyming  a 
whole  company  to  their  infinite  amusement.  Each  one  of 
his  personal  friends,  in  talking  of  him,  says,  "  But  if  you 
could  only  have  heard  him  "  at  such  a  time  ;  but  of  course 
no  one  can  repeat  such  unpremeditated  jests,  and  the 
flavor  is  gone  from  them  when  any  one  tries  to  do  so. 
He  was  the  life  of  the  clubs  he  frequented,  and  spent 
much  time  in  them  and  at  theatres,  of  which  he  was  pas- 
sionately fond.  His  duties  as  a  man  of  fashion  took  much 
of  his  time,  and  his  friends  were  always  wondering  when 
he  wrote  his  books.  Much  of  the  joHity  and  boyish 
hilarity  of  his  life  in  society  was  a  rebound  from  the  strain 
of  these  books.  He  was  wont  to  live  much,  as  did  Dick- 
ens, in  the  creations  of  his  fancy,  and  sometimes  his 
emotional  nature  became  overwrought  in  his  work.  Mr. 
Underwood  tells  us  :  — 

"  One  day  while  the  great  novel  of  '  The  Newcomes  '  was 
in  course  of  publication,  Lowell,  who  was  then  in  London, 
met  Thackeray  on  the  street.  The  novelist  was  serious  in 
manner,  and  his  looks  and  voice  told  of  weariness  and 
affliction.  He  saw  the  kindly  inquiry  in  the  poet's  eyes,  and 
said,  '  Come  into  Evans's  and  I  '11  tell  you  all  about  it.  / 
have  killed  the  Colo7iel!''  So  they  walked  in  and  took  a 
table  in  a  remote  corner;  and  then  Thackeray,  drawing  the 
fresh  manuscript  from  his  breast-pocket,  read  through  that 
exquisitely  touching  chapter  which  records  the  death  of 
Colonel  Newcome.  When  he  came  to  the  final  Adsum^ 
the  tears  which  had  been  swelling  his  lids  for  some  time 
trickled  down  his  face,  and  the  last  word  was  almost  an 
inarticulate  sob." 

Thackeray's  sensibility  was  really  extreme,  and  he  could 
not  read  anything  pathetic  without  actual  discomfort, 
—  never  could  get  through  "  The  Bride  of  Lammermoor," 
for  instance,  —  and  would  not  listen  to  any  sad  tales  of 
suffering  in  real  Hfe  if  he  could  escape  them.  If  he  did 
hear  of  any  one  in  want  or  distress,  he  relieved  his  feelings 


330  HOME  LIFE  OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

by  instantly  appropriating  to  their  use  all  the  money  he 
found  himself  in  possession  of  at  the  time.  When  he  was 
editor  of  the  "Cornhill  Magazine,"  this  soft-heartedness 
was  a  great  drawback  to  him.  He  was  always  paying  for 
contributions  he  could  not  use,  if  they  were  sent,  as 
so  many  are,  with  some  pitiful  tale  accompanying ;  and 
was  always  wasting  his  valuable  time  by  writing  to  poor 
creatures  about  their  dreary  verses,  which  there  was  no 
hope  of  his  being  able  to  improve.  When  quite  young,  he 
loaned  —  or  rather  gave,  though  he  called  it  a  loan  — 
three  hundred  pounds  to  poor  old  Maginn,  when  he  was 
beaten  in  the  battle  of  life  and  lay  in  the  Fleet  Prison. 
But  he  denied  this  act  with  the  utmost  vehemence  when 
accused  of  it,  and  berated  the  old  fellow  in  a  laborious 
manner  for  having  been  beaten  when  he  should  have 
fought  on.  Indeed,  he  was  very  much  ashamed  of  his 
soft-heartedness  always,  and  would  oftentimes  bluster  and 
appear  very  fierce  when  appealed  to  for  assistance. 

Anthony  Trollope  tells  a  story  about  going  to  him  one 
day  and  telling  him  of  the  straits  to  which  a  mutual  friend 
was  reduced. 

*' '  Do  you  mean  to  say  that  I  am  to  find  two  thousand 
pounds  ? '  he  said  angrily,  with  some  expletives.  I  explained 
that  I  had  not  even  suggested  the  doing  of  anything,  —  only 
that  we  might  discuss  the  matter.  Then  there  came  over  his 
face  a  peculiar  smile,  and  a  wink  in  his  eye,  and  he  whispered 
his  suggestion,  as  if  ashamed  of  his  meanness.  *  I  '11  go 
half,'  he  said,  '  if  anybody  will  do  the  rest.'  And  he  did  go 
half  at  a  day  or  two's  notice.  I  could  tell  various  stories  of 
the  same  kind." 

These  things  were  not  easy  for  him  to  do ;  for  he  was 
never  a  rich  man,  and  he  had  constant  calls  upon  his  char- 
ity. He  kept  a  small  floating  fund  always  in  circulation 
among  his  poorer  acquaintances ;  and  when  one  returned 
it  to  him  he  passed  it  to  another,  never  considering  it  as 
his  own  but  for  the  use  of  the  unfortunate.  He  liked  to 
disguise  his  charities  as  jokes,  —  as  filling  a  pill-box  with 


WILLIAM  MAKEPEACE    THACKERAY.        331 

gold  pieces  and  sending  it  to  a  needy  friend,  with  the  in- 
scription, "  To  be  taken  one  at  a  time,  as  needed ;  "  and 
various  devices  of  this  kind.  He  was  as  generous  of  his 
praise  as  of  his  money,  and  ahvays  had  a  good  word  for 
his  literary  friends.  His  fine  tribute  to  Macaulay  will  be 
remembered,  and  his  praise  of  Washington  Irving,  of 
Charlotte  Bronte,  and  many  others.  While  he  had  an 
exaggerated  contempt  for  the  foibles  of  the  world  at  large, 
he  had  an  almost  equally  exaggerated  sympathy  for  the 
joys  and  sorrows  of  individuals ;  and  much  of  the  scorn 
which  he  gives  to  humanity  collectively  may  be  taken  as 
a  sort  of  vent  to  his  feelings  when  he  is  ashamed  of  hav- 
ing been  too  foolishly  weak  in  dealing  with  some  of  these 
fellow-mortals  in  real  Hfe. 

He  never  encouraged  his  companions  in  being  cynical, 
but  always  encouraged  them  in  admiration.  "  I  am  glad 
he  worships  anybody,"  he  said,  when  some  friends  were 
satirizing  an  absent  companion  for  his  devotion  to  a  great 
man.  Neither  would  he  encourage  any  unkind  talk  about 
the  absent,  or  laugh  at  any  good  hit  which  was  aimed  at  a 
friend.  "  You  fiend  ! "  he  said  to  a  fiiend  who  was  laugh- 
ing over  a  sharp  attack  on  an  acquaintance,  and  he  refused 
to  read  or  hear  a  word  of  it.  Indeed,  for  steadfast  loyalty 
to  his  friends,  his  equal  has  seldom  been  seen.  He  made 
common  cause  with  them  in  everything,  and  nothing  so 
enraged  him  as  treachery  or  deceit  among  friends. 

He  was  a  man  of  aristocratic  feeling,  and  resented  famil- 
iarity. He  was  also  in  general  a  reserved  man,  and  allowed 
few  people  really  to  know  him.  He  had  a  surface  nature 
which  was  all  his  mere  acquaintances  knew.  Even  his 
friends  were  long  in  finding  him  out.  Douglas  Jerrold 
was  once  heard  to  say,  "  I  have  known  Thackeray  eigh- 
teen years,  and  I  don't  know  him  yet ; "  and  this  was  the 
case  with  the  majority  of  his  friends.  His  great  griefs  he 
kept  closely  within  his  own  heart,  and  the  more  serious 
side  of  his  nature  was  all  hidden  from  the  world  as  much 
as  he  could  hide  it.  Those  who  read  between  the  lines 
discovered  it  in  his  books,  and  those  who  looked  deeply 


332 


HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 


enough  into  human  nature  found  it  in  the  man,  but  super- 
ficial observers  saw  only  the  mocking  man  of  the  world. 
When  suddenly  observed,  his  face  always  had  a  sad,  grave 
aspect,  and  it  was  often  hard  for  him  to  throw  off  this  seri- 
ousness and  to  put  on  his  harlequin's  mask.  Upon  reli- 
gious matters  he  was  always  reticent,  but  reverent.  Only 
upon  rare  occasions  would  he  discuss  serious  subjects  at 
all,  and  only  with  a  chosen  few.  In  one  letter  which  has 
been  published  he  departs  from  his  usual  custom  and 
writes  :  — 

"  I  never  feel  pity  for  a  man  dying,  only  for  survivors  if 
there  be  such  passionately  deploring  him.  You  see  the 
pleasures  the  undersigned  proposes  to  himself  here  in  future 
years,  —  a  sight  of  the  Alps,  a  hoHday  on  the  Rhine,  a  ride 
in  the  Park,  a  colloquy  with  pleasant  friends  of  an  evening. 
If  it  is  death  to  part  with  these  delights  (and  pleasures  they 
are,  and  no  mistake),  sure  the  mind  can  conceive  others  after- 
ward ;  and  I  know  one  small  philosopher  who  is  quite  ready 
to  give  up  these  pleasures,  —  quite  content  (after  a  pang  or 
two  of  separation  from  dear  friends  here)  to  put  his  hand  into 
that  of  the  summoning  angel,  and  say,  '  Lead  on,  O  messen- 
ger of  God  our  Father,  to  the  next  place  whither  the  divine 
goodness  calls  us.'  We  must  be  blindfolded  before  we  can 
pass,  I  know;  but  I  have  no  fear  about  what  is  to  come,  any 
more  than  my  children  need  fear  that  the  love  of  their  father 
should  fail  them.  I  thought  myself  a  dead  man  once,  and 
protest  the  notion  gave  me  no  disquiet  about  myself,  —  at 
least  the  philosophy  is  more  comfortable  than  that  which  is 
tinctured  with  brimstone." 

He  hated  those  who  make  a  stock  in  trade  of  their  reli- 
gion, and,  like  Dr.  Johnson,  would  have  advised  them  to 
clear  their  minds  of  cant;  but  no  genuine  evidence  of 
religious  feeling  or  experience  was  ever  treated  lightly  by 
him,  and  he  was  greatly  shocked  at  any  real  desecration 
of  sacred  things.  He  had  a  simple,  childhke  faith  in  God 
and  in  the  Saviour,  and  a  firm  hope  in  the  everlasting  Hfe. 

In  person  Thackeray  was  a  tall,  ruddy,  simple-looking 
EngHshman,  with  rather  a  full  face,  florid,  almost  rubicund, 
and  keen,  kindly  eyes,  and,  after  forty,  abundant  gray  hair. 


WILLIAM  MAKEPEACE    THACKERAY.        333 

He  had  a  conspicuous,  almost  a  commanding  figure,  with 
a  certain  awkwardness  in  his  gait.  He  had  a  misshaped 
nose,  caused  by  an  accident  in  boyhood,  and  a  sarcastic 
twinkle  oftentimes  in  his  eyes,  which  changed  the  expres- 
sion of  his  whole  face. 

He  dressed  well,  but  unpretendingly,  and  his  voice  and 
manner  were  always  courteous  and  cordial.  He  smiled 
easily,  and  had  a  humorous  look  when  not  oppressed  with 
sadness,  which  was  often  the  case  in  later  life.  He  died 
suddenly  in  middle  life,  leaving,  like  Dickens,  an  unfinished 
novel  in  the  press.  No  other  literary  man,  save  perhaps 
Macaulay,  has  been  mourned  as  Thackeray  was  mourned. 
There  was  universal  sorrow  for  his  premature  loss,  and  great 
personal  grief  among  his  friends.  Twenty-three  years  have 
passed  since  that  time,  and  no  successor  has  arisen  to  repay 
the  world  for  that  loss.  When  the  curtain  fell  upon 
Becky  Sharpe  and  Beatrix,  upon  Ethel  Newcome  and  the 
good  Colonel,  upon  Laura  and  Pendennis,  upon  Esmond 
and  Warrington,  and  upon  all  the  deeply  studied  char- 
acters of  his  mimic  stage,  that  curtain  fell  to  rise  no  more 
upon  such  creatures  as  his  hands  had  made.  He  will  have 
no  successor.  He  is  the  One,  the  Only.  Such  pathos, 
such  wit,  such  wisdom,  will  not  dawn  upon  us  again  —  in 
time. 

When  he  wrote  Finis  for  the  last  time  at  the  close  of 
one  of  those  matchless  volumes,  it  was  an  epoch  closed 
in  the  histor}'  of  Hterature.  When  the  recording  angel 
wrote  Finis  at  the  close  of  that  sad  and  weary  but  bravely 
spent  and  useful  hfe,  it  was  a  sad  day  for  the  world  of  men, 
who  will  not  look  upon  his  like  again.  Who  that  felt  a 
love  for  the  writer  and  the  man  could  fail  to  rejoice  that 
the  end  was  quick  and  painless  ?  One  of  our  own  poets 
has  well  described  the  scene  :  — 

"  The  angel  came  by  night 

(Such  angels  still  come  down), 
And  like  a  winter  cloud 

Passed  over  London  Town, 
Along  its  lonesome  streets, 

Where  want  had  ceased  to  weep, 


334  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREA  T  A  UTHORS. 


Until  it  reached  a  house 

Where  a  great  man  lay  asleep ; 
The  man  of  all  his  tmie 

Who  knew  the  most  of  men,  — 
The  soundest  head  and  heart, 

The  sharpest,  kindest  pen. 
It  paused  beside  his  bed 

And  whispered  in  his  ear  ; 
He  never  turned  his  head, 

But  answered,  *  I  am  here.' 
Into  the  night  they  went ; 

At  morning,  side  by  side, 
They  gained  the  sacred  place 

Where  the  greatest  dead  abide : 
Where  grand  old  Homer  sits. 

In  godlike  state  benign  ; 
Where  broods  in  endless  thought 

The  awful  Florentine ; 
Where  sweet  Cervantes  walks, 

A  smile  on  his  grave  face ; 
Where  gossips  quaint  Montaigne, 

The  wisest  of  his  race  ; 
Where  Goethe  looks  through  all 

With  that  calm  eye  of  his ; 
Where  —  little  seen,  but  Ught  — 

The  only  Shakspeare  is ! 
When  the  new  spirit  came. 

They  asked  him,  drawing  near, 
Art  thou  become  like  us  ? ' 

He  answered, '  I  am  here.'  " 


CHARLES   DICKENS. 

NO  novelist  has  dealt  so  directly  with  the  home  life  of 
the  world  as  Charles  Dickens.  He  has  painted 
few  historic  pictures  ;  he  has  dealt  mostly  in  interiors,  — 
beautiful  bits  of  home  life,  full  of  domestic  feehng.  In- 
deed, we  may  say  that  his  background  is  always  the  home, 
and  here  he  paints  his  portraits,  often  like  those  of  Ho- 
garth for  strength  and  grotesque  effect.  Here,  too,  he 
limns  the  scenes  of  his  comedy-tragedy,  and  depicts  the 
changing  fashions  of  the  time.  The  color  is  sometimes  a 
little  crude,  laid  on  occasionally  with  too  coarse  a  brush  ; 
but  the  effect  is  always  Hfelike,  and  our  interest  in  it  is 
never  known  to  flag. 

Nowhere  else  in  all  the  range  of  literature  have  we  such 
tender  description  of  home  life  and  love,  such  intuitive 
knowledge  of  child  life,  such  wonderful  sympathy  with 
every  form  of  domestic  wrong  and  suffering,  such  delicate 
appreciation  of  the  shyest  and  most  unobtrusive  of  social 
virtues ;  nowhere  else  such  indignation  at  any  neglect  or 
desecration  of  the  home,  as  in  Mrs.  Jellyby  with  her  mis- 
sion, in  Mrs.  Pardiggle  with  her  charities,  Mr.  Pecksniff 
with  his  hypocrisy,  and  Mr.  Dombey  with  his  unfeeling 
selfishness.  In  short,  Dickens  is  pre-eminently  the  prophet 
and  the  poet  of  the  home. 

Now,  can  it  be  possible  that  we  must  say  of  such  a 
man  as  this,  that  in  his  own  hfe  he  was  the  opposite  of  all 


336  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

that  which  he  so  feelingly  describes,  —  that  he  desecrated 
the  very  home  he  so  apostrophizes,  —  that  he  put  all  his 
warmth,  geniality,  and  tenderness  into  his  books  and  kept 
for  his  own  fireside  his  sour  humors  and  unhappy  moods,  — 
that  he  was  ''ill  to  live  with,"  as  Mrs.  Carlyle  puts  it? 
We  cannot  believe  it  in  so  bald  a  form,  but  we  are  forced 
to  admit  that  his  married  life  seems  to  have  been  in  every 
way  unhappy  and  unfortunate.  No  one  could  state  this 
more  strongly  than  Dickens  himself,  in  the  letter  he  wrote 
at  the  time  of  the  separation.     He  said  :  — 

"  Mrs.  Dickens  and  I  have  lived  unhappily  for  many  years. 
Hardly  any  one  who  has  known  us  intimately  can  fail  to 
have  known  that  we  are  in  all  respects  of  character  and  tem- 
perament wonderfully  unsuited  to  each  other.  I  suppose 
that  no  two  people,  not  vicious  in  themselves,  were  ever 
joined  together,  who  had  greater  difficulty  in  understanding 
one  another,  or  who  had  less  in  common.  An  attached 
woman-servant  (more  friend  to  both  of  us  than  servant),  who 
lived  with  us  sixteen  years  and  had  the  closest  familiar  ex- 
perience of  this  unhappiness  in  London,  in  the  country,  in 
France,  in  Italy,  wherever  we  have  been,  year  after  year, 
month  after  month,  week  after  week,  day  after  day,  will  bear 
testimony  to  this.  Nothing  has  on  many  occasions  stood 
between  us  and  a  separation  but  Mrs.  Dickens's  sister, 
Georgina  Hogarth.  From  the  age  of  fifteen,  she  has  devoted 
herself  to  our  home  and  our  children.  She  has  been  their 
playmate,  nurse,  instructress,  friend,  protectress,  adviser, 
companion.  In  the  manly  consideration  towards  Mrs.  Dick- 
ens, which  I  owe  to  my  wife,  I  will  only  remark  of  her  that 
the  peculiarity  of  her  character  has  thrown  all  the  children 
on  some  one  else.  I  do  not  know,  I  cannot  by  any  stretch 
of  fancy  imagine,  what  would  have  become  of  them  but  for 
this  aunt,  who  has  grown  up  with  them,  to  whom  they  are  de- 
voted, and  who  has  sacrificed  the  best  part  of  her  youth  and 
life  to  them.  She  has  remonstrated,  reasoned,  suffered, 
and  toiled,  and  come  again  to  prevent  a  separation  between 
Mrs.  Dickens  and  me.  Mrs.  Dickens  has  often  expressed 
to  her  her  sense  of  her  affectionate  care  and  devotion  in 
the  house,  —  never  more  strongly  than  within  the  last 
twelve  months." 


CHARLES  DICKENS.  337 

Again,  in  the  public  statement  which  he  prepared  for 
"  Household  Words,"  alluding  to  a  multitude  of  damaging 
rumors  which  were  quickly  put  in  circulation,  he  says :  — 

"  By  some  means,  arising  out  of  wickedness  or  out  of 
folly  or  out  of  inconceivable  wild  chance,  or  out  of  all  three, 
this  trouble  has  been  made  the  occasion  of  misrepresenta- 
tions most  grossly  false,  most  monstrous,  and  most  cruel,  — 
involving  not  only  me,  but  innocent  persons  dear  to  my 
heart,  and  innocent  persons  of  whom  I  have  no  knowledge, 
if  indeed  they  have  any  existence,  —  and  so  widely  spread 
that  I  doubt  if  one  reader  in  a  thousand  will  peruse  these 
lines  by  whom  some  touch  of  the  breath  of  these  slanderers 
will  not  have  passed  like  an  unwholesome  air. 

"  Those  who  know  me  and  my  nature  need  no  assurance 
under  my  hand  that  such  calumnies  are  as  irreconcilable 
with  me  as  they  are  in  their  frantic  incoherence  with  one  an- 
other. But  there  is  a  great  multitude  who  know  me  through 
my  writings  and  who  do  not  know  me  otherwise,  and  I  can- 
not bear  that  one  of  them  should  be  left  in  doubt  or  hazard 
of  doubt  through  my  poorly  shrinking  from  taking  the  un- 
usual means  to  which  I  now  resort  of  circulating  the  truth. 
I  most  solemnly  declare  then  —  and  this  I  do  both  in  my 
own  name  and  my  wife's  name  —  that  all  lately  whispered 
rumors  touching  the  trouble  at  which  I  have  glanced  are 
abominably  false  ;  and  that  whosoever  repeats  one  of  them, 
after  this  denial,  will  lie  as  wilfully  and  as  foully  as  it  is  pos- 
sible for  any  false  witness  to  he  before  heaven  and  earth." 

This  denial,  coming  from  a  man  of  truth  and  honor  like 
Charles  Dickens,  must,  once  for  all,  dispose  of  that  con- 
venient way  of  accounting  for  the  sad  estrangement. 

The  reasons  for  the  unhappy  state  of  things  were  of  a 
much  more  comphcated  nature  than  this.  Only  the  most 
intimate  of  his  friends  ever  knew  them  in  full,  and  of 
course  they  were  debarred  from  making  them  public. 
But  Professor  Ward  of  Cambridge  University,  who  has 
written  a  very  kind  and  appreciative  Life  of  Dickens,  and 
one  which  gives  a  far  more  pleasing  idea  of  his  character 
than  the  bulky  and  egotistical  Life  by  Forster,  gives  a 

22 


33S  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

clue  to  the  whole  trouble  in  the  following  statement.     He 
says  :  — 

"  If  he  ever  loved  his  wife  with  that  affection  before  which 
so-called  incompatibilities  of  habits,  temper,  or  disposition 
fade  into  nothingness,  there  is  no  indication  of  it  in  any  of 
the  numerous  letters  addressed  to  her.  Neither  has  it  ever 
been  pretended  that  he  strove  in  the  direction  of  that  res- 
ignation which  love  and  duty  made  possible  to  David  Cop- 
perfield,  or  even  that  he  remained  in  every  way  master  of 
himself,  as  many  men  have  known  how  to  remain,  the  story 
of  whose  wedded  Hfe  and  its  disappointments  has  never  been 
written  in  history  or  figured  in  fiction." 

And  this  troublous  condition  of  things  was  very  much 
intensified  by  Dickens  having  fallen  violently  in  love  with 
Mary  Hogarth,  Mrs.  Dickens's  youngest  sister.  This 
beautiful  girl  died  at  their  house  at  the  early  age  of  seven- 
teen. No  sorrow  seems  ever  to  have  touched  the  heart 
and  possessed  the  imagination  of  Charles  Dickens  like 
that  for  the  loss  of  this  dearly  loved  girl.  ^'  I  can  solemnly 
say,"  he  ^vrote  to  her  mother  a  few  months  after  her  death, 
"  that  waking  or  sleeping  I  have  never  lost  the  recollection 
of  our  hard  sorrow,  and  I  never  shall."  "  If,"  he  writes  in 
his  diary  at  the  beginning  of  a  new  year,  "  she  was  with 
me  now,  —  the  same  winning,  happy,  amiable  companion, 
sympathizing  with  all  my  thoughts  and  feelings  more  than 
any  one  I  ever  knew  did  or  will,  —  I  think  I  should  have 
nothing  to  wish  but  a  continuance  of  such  happiness." 
Throughout  life  her  memory  haunted  him  with  great  vivid- 
ness. After  her  death  he  wrote  :  "  I  dreamed  of  her 
every  night  for  many  weeks,  and  always  with  a  kind  of 
quiet  happiness,  which  became  so  pleasant  to  me  that  I 
never  lay  down  without  a  hope  of  the  vision  returning." 
The  year  before  he  died  he  \vrote  to  a  friend  :  "  She  is  so 
much  in  my  thoughts  at  all  times,  especially  when  I  am 
successful,  that  the  recollection  of  her  is  an  essential  part 
of  my  being,  and  is  as  inseparable  from  my  existence  as 
the  beating  of  my  heart  is."     In  a  word,  she  was  the  one 


CHARLES  DICKENS.  339 

great  imaginative  passion  of  his  life.  He  is  said  to  have 
pictured  her  in  Little  Nell,  and  he  writes  after  finishing 
that  book,  "  Dear  Mary  died  yesterday  when  I  think  of 
it." 

Have  we  not  in  this  the  key  to  all  the  sorrows  of  his 
domestic  life?  Could  he  have  married  the  woman  he 
loved  in  this  manner,  he  would  doubtless  have  been  one 
of  the  tenderest  and  most  devoted  of  husbands,  and  a 
family  life  as  beautiful  as  any  of  the  ideal  ones  he  has 
depicted  would  have  resulted.  It  is  probable  that  he  did 
not  know  Mary  Hogarth  until  after  his  marriage,  when 
she  came  to  live  in  his  house,  and  when  his  youthful 
fancy  for  his  wife  had  begun  to  decline.  Miss  Hogarth 
died  instantly  of  heart-disease,  without  even  a  premonitory 
warning. 

All  accounts  agree  in  calling  Mrs.  Dickens  a  very  pretty, 
amiable,  and  well-bred  woman;  and  even  if  she  was  as 
infinitely  incapable  as  represented,  that  alone  would  seem 
to  be  insufficient  cause  for  so  serious  a  trouble.  Miss 
Georgina  Hogarth,  whom  all  describe  as  a  very  lovely 
and  superior  person,  possessed  the  executive  ability  Mrs. 
Dickens  lacked,  it  would  seem ;  for  all  visitors  both  to 
Tavistock  House  and  Gad's  Hill  describe  with  enthusiasm 
the  perfect  order  which  prevailed  in  the  large  establish- 
ments, attributing  this  in  part  at  least  to  Dickens's  own 
intense  love  of  method  and  passion  for  neatness.  But  no 
man  without  the  aid  of  feminine  head  and  hands  would 
have  succeeded  in  attaining  to  this  perfect  housekeeping, 
especially  where  the  family  consisted  of  nine  children,  as 
in  this  case. 

Hans  Christian  Andersen  thus  describes  a  visit  to  Gad's 
Hill :  — 

"  It  was  a  fine  new  house,  with  red  walls  and  four  bow- 
windows,  and  a  jutting  entrance  supported  by  pillars  ;  in  the 
gable  a  large  window.  A  dense  hedge  of  cherry-laurel  sur- 
rounded the  house,  in  front  of  which  extended  a  neat  lawn, 
and  on  the  opposite  side  rose  two  mighty  cedars  of  Leba- 
non, whose  crooked  branches  spread  their  green  far  over 


340  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

another  large  lawn  surrounded  by  ivy  and  wild  vines,  the 
hedge  being  so  dense  and  dark  that  no  sunbeam  could 
penetrate  it. 

"  As  soon  as  I  stepped  into  the  house,  Dickens  came  to 
meet  me  kindly  and  cordially.  He  was  now  in  the  prime  of 
life,  —  still  so  youthful,  so  active,  so  eloquent,  so  rich  in  the 
most  pleasant  humor,  through  which  his  sterling  kind-hearted- 
ness always  beamed  forth.  As  he  stood  before  me  in  the 
first  hour,  so  he  was  and  remained  during  all  the  weeks  I 
passed  in  his  company,  —  merry,  good-natured,  and  full  of 
charming  sympathy.  Dickens  at  home  seems  to  be  perpet- 
ually jolly,  and  enters  into  the  interests  of  games  with  all  the 
ardor  of  a  boy.  My  bedroom  was  the  perfection  of  a  sleep- 
ing-apartment: the  view  across  the  Kentish  hills,  with  a 
distant  peep  of  the  Thames,  charming.  In  every  room  I 
found  a  table  covered  with  writing-materials,  headed  note- 
paper,  envelopes,  cut  quill-pens,  wax,  matches,  sealing-wax, 
and  all  scrupulously  neat  and  orderl}'.  There  are  magnificent 
specimens  of  Newfoundland  dogs  on  the  grounds,  such  ani- 
mals as  Landseer  would  love  to  paint.  One  of  these,  named 
Bumble,  seems  to  be  a  favorite  with  Dickens." 

Mr.  Mackenzie  writes  :  — 

"  Eminently  social  and  domestic,  he  exercised  a  liberal 
hospitality,  and  though  he  lived  well  as  his  means  allowed, 
avoided  excesses.  It  is  said  of  him  that  he  never  lost  a  friend, 
never  made  an  enemy." 

From  all  sources  comes  the  same  report  of  his  geniality, 
of  his  devotion  to  his  children  and  their  devotion  to  him, 
of  his  constant  generosity  and  good-humor.  Byron's  old 
servant  said  that  Lady  Byron  was  the  only  woman  he  ever 
saw  who  could  not  manage  his  master.  Was  this  also  true 
of  Mrs.  Dickens  ?  Was  she  the  only  one  who  found  him 
"  ill  to  live  with  "?  It  may  be  ;  and  yet  one  can  easily 
imagine  him  to  have  been  a  man  of  moods,  and  that  in 
some  of  these  moods  it  would  be  best  to  give  him  a  wide 
berth.  The  very  excess  of  his  animal  spirits  may  have 
been  wearying  to  one  who  could  not  share  them ;  and 
that  he  was  egotistical  to  a  degree,  and  vain,  and  fond  of 


CHARLES  DICKENS.  341 

flattery,  goes  without  saying.  A  lady  in  the  "  English- 
woman's Magazine  "  tells  this  story  of  his  wild  and  reck- 
less fun,  and  it  is  matched  by  many  others.  They  were 
down  on  the  seashore  in  the  moonlight,  and  had  been 
dancing  there. 

"  We  then  strolled  farther  down  to  watch  the  fading  light. 
The  tide  came  rippling  in.  The  night  grew  darker,  —  star- 
less, moonless.  Dickens  seemed  suddenly  to  be  possessed 
with  the  spirit  of  mischief ;  he  threw  his  arm  around  me,  and 
ran  me  down  the  inclined  plane  to  the  end  of  the  jetty  till  we 
reached  the  toll-post.  He  put  his  other  arm  around  this, 
and  exclaimed  in  theatrical  tones  that  he  intended  to  hold 
me  there  till  the  sad  sea  waves  should  submerge  us.  '  Think 
of  the  sensation  we  shall  create.'  Here  I  implored  him  to 
let  me  go,  and  struggled  hard  to  release  myself.  '  Let  your 
mind  dwell  upon  the  column  in  the  "Times  "  wherein  will  be 
vividly  described  the  pathetic  fate  of  the  lovely  E.  P., 
drowned  by  Dickens  in  a  fit  of  dementia.  Don't  struggle, 
poor  httle  bird ;  you  are  helpless.'  By  this  time  the  last 
gleam  of  light  had  faded  out,  and  the  water  close  to  us 
looked  uncomfortably  black.  The  tide  was  coming  up 
rapidly,  and  surged  over  my  feet.  I  gave  a  loud  shriek,  and 
tried  to  bring  him  back  to  common-sense  by  reminding  him 
that  my  dress  —  my  best  dress,  my  only  silk  dress  —  would 
be  ruined.  Even  this  climax  did  not  soften  him ;  he  still 
went  on  with  his  serio-comic  nonsense,  shaking  with  laughter 
all  the  time,  and  panting  with  his  struggles  to  hold  me. 
'Mrs.  Dickens,'  I  shrieked,  'help  me!  Make  Mr.  Dickens 
let  me  go  —  the  waves  are  up  to  my  knees.'  '  Charles,'  cried 
Mrs.  Dickens,  '  how  can  you  be  so  silly .?  You  will  both  be 
carried  off  by  the  tide  !  '  And  it  was  not  until  my  dress  had 
been  completely  ruined  that  I  succeeded  in  wresting  myself 
from  him.  Upon  two  other  occasions  he  seized  me  and  ran 
with  me  under  the  cataract,  and  held  me  there  until  I  was 
thoroughly  baptized  and  my  bonnets  a  wreck  of  lace  and 
feathers." 

The  same  \vriter  says,  —  and  she  is  one  who  writes 
from  famihar  personal  acquaintance,  —  "  To  describe 
Dickens  as  always  amiable,  always  just,  and  always  in  the 
right,  would  be  simply  false  and  untrue  to  Nature ;  "  and 


342  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

she  relates  several  anecdotes  going  to  prove  that  he  was 
sometimes  capricious,  not  always  responsive  to  appeals 
for  help,  and  other  things  of  that  sort;  all  of  which 
may  be  true  and  not  be  very  damaging.  This  writer 
tells  still  another  story  of  his  reckless  fun-making,  as 
follows  :  — 

"  We  were  about  to  make  an  excursion  to  Pegwell  Bay, 
and  lunch  there.  Presently  Dickens  came  in  in  high  glee, 
flourishing  about  a  yard  of  ballads,  which  he  had  bought  from 
a  beggar  in  the  street.  '  Look  here,'  he  cried  exultingly,  '  all 
for  a  penny.  One  song  alone  is  worth  a  Jew's  eye,  —  quite 
new  and  original,  the  subject  being  the  interesdng  announce- 
ment by  our  gracious  Queen.'  He  commenced  to  give  us  a 
specimen,  but  after  hearing  one  verse  there  arose  a  cry  of 
universal  execration.  He  pretended  to  be  vexed  at  our 
'shutting  him  up,'  said  there  was  nothing  wrong  in  it,  he 
had  written  a  great  deal  worse  himself;  and  when  we  were 
going  to  enter  the  carriages  he  said  :  '  Now,  look  here  !  I 
give  due  notice  to  all  and  sundry,  that  I  mean  to  sing  that 
song,  and  a  good  many  others,  during  the  ride  ;  so  those 
ladies  who  think  them  vulgar  can  go  in  the  other  carriages. 
I  am  not  going  to  invest  my  hard-earned  penny  for  nothing.' 
I  was  quite  certain  that  Charles  Dickens  was  the  last  man  in 
the  world  to  shock  the  modesty  of  any  female,  and  too  much 
of  a  gentleman  to  do  anything  that  was  annoying  to  us,  but 
I  thought  it  as  well  to  go  in  the  other  carriage;  and  so  he 

had  no  ladies  with  him  but  his  wife  and  Mrs.  S .     I  was 

not  sorry,  however,  to  be  where  I  was,  as  I  heard  for  the 
next  half-hour  pordons  of  those  songs  wafted  on  the  breeze ; 
and  the  bursts  of  laughter  from  ladies  and  gentlemen  and 
the  mischievous  twinkle  in  Dickens's  eye  proved  that  he  was 
in  such  a  madcap  mood  that  it  was  as  well  there  were  none 
but  married  people  with  him,  —  the  subject  being  of  a 
'  Gampish  '  nature.  But  he  was  not  always  full  of  spirits  or 
even-tempered,  —  indeed,  I  was  sometimes  puzzled  by  the 
variability  of  his  moods." 

Anecdotes  like  the  following,  told  by  Blanchard  Jerrold, 
abound  in  all  writers  who  wrote  of  Dickens  from  personal 
knowledge  :  — 


CHARLES  DICKENS.  343 

*'  A  very  dear  friend  of  mine,  and  of  many  others  to  whom 
literature  is  a  staff,  had  died.  To  say  that  his  family  had 
claims  upon  Dickens  is  to  say  that  they  were  promptly  ac- 
knowledged and  satisfied,  with  the  grace  and  heartiness  which 
double  the  gift,  sweeten  the  bread,  and  warm  the  wine.  I 
asked  a  connection  of  our  dead  friend  whether  he  had  seen 
the  poor  wife  and  children.  '  Seen  them  ?  '  he  answered.  '  I 
was  there  to-day.  They  are  removed  into  a  charming  cot- 
tage. They  have  everything  about  them  ;  and  just  think  of 
this  :  when  I  burst  into  the  room,  in  my  eager  survey  of  the 
new  home,  I  saw  a  man  in  his  shirt-sleeves  up  some  steps, 
hammering  away  lustily.  He  turned.  It  was  Charles  Dick- 
ens, and  he  was  hanging  the  pictures  for  the  widow.  .  .  . 
Dickens  was  the  soul  of  truth  and  manliness  as  well  as  kind- 
ness, so  that  such  a  service  as  this  came  as  naturally  to  him 
as  help  from  his  purse.' " 

Jerrold  continues :  — 

"  There  was  that  boy-element  in  him  which  has  been  so 
often  remarked  of  men  of  genius.  '  Why,  we  played  a  game 
of  knock  'em  down  only  a  week  ago,'  a  friend  remarked  to 
me  last  June,  with  beaming  eyes,  '  and  he  showed  all  the  old 
astonishing  energy  and  delight  in  taking  aim  at  Aunt  Sally.' 
My  own  earliest  recollections  of  Dickens  are  of  his  gayest 
moods,  when  the  boy  in  him  was  exuberant,  and  leap-frog 
and  rounders  were  not  sports  too  young  for  the  player  who 
had  written  '  Pickwick  '  twenty  years  before.  The  sweet  and 
holy  lessons  which  he  presented  to  humanity  out  of  the 
humble  places  in  the  world  could  not  have  been  evolved  out 
of  a  nature  less  true  and  sympathetic  than  his.  It  wanted 
such  a  man  as  Dickens  was  in  his  life  to  be  such  a  writer  as 
he  was  for  the  world." 

One  more  anecdote.  J.  C.  Young  tells  us  that  one  day 
Mrs.  Henry  Siddons,  a  neighbor  and  intimate  of  Lord 
Jeffrey,  who  often  entered  his  library  unannounced, 
opened  the  door  very  gently  to  see  if  he  were  there,  and 
saw  enough  at  a  glance  to  convince  her  that  the  visit  was 
ill-timed.  The  hard  critic  of  the  "  Edinburgh  Review  " 
was  sitting  in  his  chair  with  his  head  on  the  table  in  deep 
grief.     As  Mrs.  Siddons  was  retiring,  in  the  hope  that  her 


344  HOME  LIFE  OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

entrance  had  been  unnoticed,  Jeffrey  raised  his  head  and 
kindly  beckoned  her  back.  Perceiving  that  his  cheek 
was  flushed  and  his  eyes  suffused  with  tears,  she  begged 
permission  to  withdraw.  When  he  found  that  she  was 
intending  to  leave  him,  he  rose  from  his  chair,  took  her 
by  both  hands,  and  led  her  to  a  seat. 

"  Don't  go,  my  dear  friend ;  I  shall  be  right  again  in 
another  minute." 

"  I  had  no  idea  you  had  had  any  bad  news,  or  cause 
for  grief,  or  I  would  not  have  come.     Is  any  one  dead?  " 

"  Yes,  indeed.  I  'm  a  great  goose  to  have  given  way 
so ;  but  I  could  not  help  it.  You  '11  be  sorry  to  hear  that 
litde  Nelly,  Boz's  little  Nelly,  is  dead." 

Dear,  sweet,  loving  little  Nell !  We  doubt  if  any  other 
creation  of  poet  or  novelist  in  any  language  has  received 
the  tribute  of  as  many  tears  as  thou.  From  high,  from 
low,  on  land,  on  sea,  wherever  thy  story  has  been  read, 
there  has  been  paid  the  spontaneous  tribute  of  tears. 
Whether  or  not  many  of  the  fantastic  creations  of  the 
great  master's  hand  will  live  in  the  far  future  we  cannot 
tell,  but  of  thy  immortality  there  is  no  more  question  than 
there  is  of  that  of  Hamlet  or  of  Lear.  Bret  Harte  tells  us 
of  a  camp  among  the  stern  Sierras,  where  a  group  of  wan- 
derers gathered  about  the  fire,  and  one  of  them  arose, 
and  "from  his  pack's  scant  treasure"  drew  forth  the 
magic  book;  and  soon  all  their  own  wants  and  labors 
were  forgotten,  and 

"  The  whole  camp  with  Nell  on  English  meadows 
Wandered  and  lost  their  way." 

And  from  many  different  sources  come  stories  of  her  influ- 
ence upon  the  hearts  and  minds  of  all  classes  and  condi- 
tions of  men. 

Of  Dickens's  personal  appearance  and  of  the  leading 
traits  of  his  character  much  has  been  written,  and  by 
some  of  the  keenest  obser\^ers  of  his  time.  He  is  said  to 
have  been  a  very  small  and  sickly  boy,  subject  to  attacks 
of  violent  spasm.     Although  so  fond  of  games  and  sports 


CHARLES  DICKENS.  345 

when  a  man,  as  a  boy  he  evinced  httle  interest  in  them, 
probably  on  account  of  his  ill  health.  We  should  natu- 
rally think  of  him  as  the  autocrat  of  the  playground,  and 
the  champion  in  all  games  of  strength  and  skill ;  but  such 
was  not  the  fact.  He  was  extremely  fond  of  reading,  at  a 
very  early  age,  and  of  acting  little  plays,  and  showing  pic- 
tures in  a  magic  lantern ;  he  even  sang  at  this  time,  and 
was  as  fond  of  fun  as  in  later  life.  When  quite  young  he 
and  his  companions  mounted  a  small  theatre,  and  got 
together  scenery  to  illustrate  "The  Miller  and  his  Men," 
and  one  or  two  other  plays. 

Mr.  Forster  describes  him  thus  :  — 

"The  features  were  very  good.  He  had  a  capital  fore- 
head, a  firm  nose,  with  full,  wide  nostril,  eyes  wonderfully 
beaming  with  intellect  and  running  over  with  humor  and 
cheerfulness,  and  a  rather  prominent  mouth,  strongly  marked 
with  sensibility.  The  head  was  altogether  well-formed  and 
symmetrical,  and  the  air  and  carriage  of  it  extremely  spirited. 
The  hair,  so  scant  and  grizzled  in  later  days,  was  then  of  a 
rich  brown  and  the  most  luxuriant  abundance,  and  the 
bearded  face  of  the  last  two  decades  had  hardly  a  vestige  of 
hair  or  whisker,  but  there  was  that  in  the  face,  as  I  first  rec- 
ollect it,  which  no  time  could  change,  and  which  remained 
implanted  on  it  unalterably  to  the  last.  This  was  the  quick- 
ness, keenness,  and  practical  power,  the  eager,  restless,  en- 
ergetic look  on  each  several  feature,  that  seemed  to  tell  so 
little  of  a  student  or  writer  of  books,  and  so  much  of  a  man 
of  action  and  business  in  the  world.  Light  and  motion 
flashed  from  every  part  of  it." 

Another  keen  observer  writes  :  — 

"  The  French  painter's  remark  that  'he  was  more  like  one 
of  the  old  Dutch  admirals  we  see  in  picture  galleries  than 
a  man  of  letters,'  conveyed  an  admirably  true  idea  to  his 
friends.  He  had,  indeed,  much  of  the  quiet,  resolute  man- 
ner of  command  of  a  captain  of  a  ship.  He  trod  along 
briskly  as  he  walked  ;  as  he  listened,  his  searching  eye  rested 
on  you,  and  the  nerves  in  his  face  quivered,  much  like  those 
in  the  delicately  formed  nostrils  of  a  finely  bred  dog.  There 
was  a  curl  or  two  in  his  hair  at  each  side,  which  was  charac- 


346  HOME  LIFE  OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

teristic  ;  and  the  jaunty  way  he  wore  his  little  morning  hat, 
rather  on  one  side,  added  to  the  effect.  But  when  there  was 
anything  droll  suggested,  a  delightful  sparkle  of  lurking  hu- 
mor began  to  kindle  and  spread  to  his  mouth,  so  that,  even 
before  he  uttered  anything,  you  felt  that  something  irresisti- 
bly droll  was  at  hand." 

Mr.  Mackenzie  tells  us  :  — 

"  Dickens's  personal  taste  in  dress  was  always  'loud.'  He 
loved  gay  vests,  glittering  jewelry,  showy  satin  stocks,  and 
everything  rather  prononcej  yet  no  man  had  a  keener  or 
more  unsparing  critical  eye  for  these  vulgarities  in  others. 
He  once  gave  to  a  friend  a  vest  of  gorgeous  shawl  pattern. 
Soon  after,  at  a  party,  he  quizzed  his  friend  most  unmerci- 
fully for  his  stunning  vest,  although  he  had  on  him  at  that 
very  moment  its  twin  brother  or  sister,  whichever  sex  vests 
belong  to." 

There  was  an  almost  morbid  restlessness  in  the  man, 
out  of  which  arose  his  habit  of  excessive  walking.  When 
he  was  writing  one  of  his  great  books  he  could  not  be 
away  from  London  streets,  and  he  used  to  walk  about  in 
them  at  night  for  hours  at  a  time,  until  his  body  was  com- 
pletely exhausted ;  in  this  way  only  could  he  get  sleep. 
When  not  composing  he  loved  long  country  walks,  and 
probably  injured  his  health  much  in  later  life  by  the  great 
length  of  these  tramps  across  country.  His  restlessness 
showed  itself  also  in  many  other  ways.  The  element  of 
repose  was  not  in  him.  "  My  last  special  feat,"  he  writes 
once  when  unable  to  sleep,  "  was  turning  out  of  bed  at 
two,  after  a  hard  day,  pedestrian  and  otherwise,  and  walk- 
ing thirty  miles  into  the  country  to  breakfast." 

The  story  is  told,  too,  of  a  night  spent  in  private  theat- 
ricals, following  a  very  laborious  day  for  Dickens,  and  of 
his  being  so  much  fresher  than  any  of  his  companions  that 
towards  morning  he  jumped  leap-frog  over  the  backs  of 
the  whole  weary  company,  and  was  not  willing  to  go  to  bed 
even  then.  His  animal  spirits  were  really  inexhaustible, 
and  this  was  the  great  unfaihng  charm  of  his  companion- 
ship.    He  never  drooped  or  lagged,  but  was  always  alert, 


CHARLES  DICKENS. 


347 


keen,  and  ready  for  any  emergency.  Out-of-door  games 
he  entered  into  with  great  hilarity,  and  was  usually  the 
youngest  man  in  the  party.  There  was  a  positive  sparkle 
and  atmosphere  of  holiday  sunshine  about  him,  and  to 
no  man  was  the  word  "  genial "  ever  more  appropriately 
applied. 

He  carried  an  atmosphere  of  good  cheer  with  him  in 
person  as  he  did  in  his  books,  and  was  fond  of  the  senti- 
ment of  joviahty ;  wrote,  indeed,  a  great  deal  about  feast- 
ing, but  was  really  abstemious  himself,  though  he  liked  to 
brew  punch  and  have  little  midnight  suppers  with  his 
friends.  Yet  at  these  same  suppers  he  ate  and  drank 
almost  nothing,  though  he  furnished  the  hilarity  for  the 
whole  party. 

His  powers  of  microscopic  observation  have  seldom 
been  equalled.  As  Arthur  Helps  said  of  him,  he  seemed 
to  see  and  observe  nine  facts  while  his  companion  was 
seeing  the  tenth.  His  books  are  full  of  the  results  of  this 
accurate  observation.  Comparatively  little  in  them  is  in- 
vention ;  the  major  part  of  ev^erything  is  description  of 
something  he  has  seen  and  noted.  When  he  was  en- 
gaged in  reporting,  among  eighty  or  ninety  reporters,  he 
occupied  the  very  highest  rank,  not  merely  for  accuracy 
in  observing,  but  for  marvellous  quickness  in  transcribing. 
His  wonderful  ability  as  an  actor  is  known  to  all.  Proba- 
bly he  would  have  been  the  greatest  comedian  of  his 
day  if  he  had  not  been  one  of  its  greatest  \vriters.  His 
love  for  the  theatre  was  an  absorbing  passion.  He  was 
quite  as  good  a  manager  as  actor,  and  could  bring  order 
out  of  the  chaos  of  rehearsals  for  private  theatricals,  as  no 
other  man  has  ever  been  known  to  do.  Carlyle,  who  was 
one  of  the  keenest  observers  of  men  our  time  has  pro- 
duced, said :  "  Dickens's  essential  faculty,  I  often  say,  is 
that  of  a  first-rate  play-actor."  Macready  also  gave  it  as 
his  opinion  that  Dickens  was  the  only  amateur  with  any 
pretensions  to  talent  that  he  had  ever  seen. 

Among  the  weaknesses  of  his  character  were  his  love  of 
display,  which  amounted  to  ostentation  sometimes;   his 


348 


HOME  LIFE   OF  GREA  T  A  UTHORS. 


fear  of  being  slighted  ;  his  vanity,  which  was  prodigious  \ 
and  a  certain  hardness,  which  at  times  amounted  to  ag- 
gressiveness and  almost  to  fierceness.  The  displays  of 
this  latter  quality  were  very  rare  ;  but  they  left  an  inefface- 
able impression  upon  all  witnesses. 

The  only  political  questions  which  deeply  moved  him 
were  those  social  problems  to  which  his  sympathy  for  the 
poor  had  always  directed  his  attention,  —  the  Poor  Law, 
temperance,  Sunday  observance,  punishment  and  prisons, 
labor  and  strikes.  But  that  he  much  influenced  the  legis- 
lation of  his  country  by  his  writings,  no  man  can  doubt. 
In  religion  he  was  a  Liberal.  Born  in  the  Church  of 
England,  we  are  told  by  Professor  Ward  that  he  had  so 
strong  an  aversion  for  what  seemed  dogmatism  of  any 
kind,  that  for  a  time  —  in  1843  —  he  connected  himself 
with  a  Unitarian  congregation,  and  to  Unitarian  views  his 
own  probably  continued  during  his  life  most  nearly  to 
approach. 

In  his  will  he  says  :  — 

"  I  commit  my  soul  to  the  mercy  of  God  through  our  Lord 
and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ,  and  I  exhort  my  dear  children  hum- 
bly to  try  to  guide  themselves  by  the  teaching  of  the  New 
Testament,  in  its  broad  spirit,  and  to  put  no  faith  in  any 
man's  narrow  construction  of  its  letter  here  or  there." 

Although  a  man  of  deep  emotional  nature,  his  religion 
was,  after  all,  mostly  a  rehgion  of  good  deeds.  Helpfulness, 
kindhness,  —  these  were  to  him  the  supreme  things.  One 
who  knew  him  well  wrote  after  his  death  :  — 

*'  I  frankly  confess  that  having  met  innumerable  men  and 
had  dealings  with  innumerable  men,  I  never  met  one  with 
an  approach  to  his  genuine,  unaffected,  unchanging  kindness, 
or  one  that  ever  found  so  sunshiny  a  pleasure  in  doing  one  a 
kindness.  I  cannot  call  to  mind  that  any  request  I  ever 
made  to  him  was  ungranted,  or  left  without  an  attempt  to 
grant  it." 

Upon  this  point  all  who  ever  knew  the  man  are  well 


CHARLES  DICKENS.  349 

agreed.     It  will  suffice.     To  him  who  loved  so  much,  if 
need  be  much  will  be  forgiven. 

As  we  close  this  paper,  how  softly  pass  before  us  the 
long  procession  of  the  men  and  women  he  has  created,  — 
for  they  all  seem  thus  to  us,  —  not  characters,  but  people, 
many  of  them  personal  acquaintances  of  our  own.  There 
are  actual  tears  in  our  eyes  as  the  little  company  of  chil- 
dren pass  in  review,  led  by  David  Copperfield,  and  fol- 
lowed by  Oliver  Twist,  with  Paul  Dombey  in  his  wake, 
and  little  Nell  timidly  pressing  near ;  while  trooping  after, 
sad,  tearful,  or  grotesque,  come  Florence  Dombey,  poor 
Joe,  Pip  and  Smike,  Sloppy  and  Peepy,  Little  Dorrit  and 
Tiny  Tim,  and  many  more  of  those  with  whose  sorrows 
we  have  sympathized,  and  over  each  and  all  of  whom  we 
have  wept  hot  tears  in  the  days  that  are  no  more.  Dream- 
children,  he  calls  them ;  but  the  great  world  acknowledges 
them  as  real  beings,  and  sorrows  and  rejoices  with  them, 
even  more,  it  is  to  be  feared,  than  it  does  sometimes  with 
the  children  of  flesh  and  blood,  homeless  and  forsaken  as 
many  of  them  are.  But  for  the  sake  of  Tiny  Tim  many 
an  old  Scrooge  has  softened  his  hard  heart  somewhat; 
and  in  memory  of  poor  Joe  many  a  hardened  city  man 
has  been  a  little  less  imperious  to  the  beggar-boy  about 
"  moving  on."  Even  poor  Smike  has  served  the  purpose 
of  ameliorating  a  trifle  the  hard  lot  of  such  unfortunates  as 
he,  who  are  tyrannized  over  in  public  institutions ;  and, 
altogether,  Dickens's  dream-children  can  be  said  to  have 
been  useful  in  their  day  and  generation. 

How  the  other  old  friends  come  following  on  !  We 
have  our  own  peculiar  greeting  for  each.  We  cannot 
help  holding  our  sides  as  Mr.  Pickwick  and  Sam  Weller 
go  by,  followed  by  Captain  Cuttle  with  his  hook,  the  fin- 
est gentleman  of  them  all ;  by  the  Major  and  Mrs.  Bag- 
net,  by  whom  discipline  is  maintained  in  the  group ;  by 
Micawber,  with  his  large  outlines  and  flowing  periods ; 
and  by  Mrs.  Micawber  and  her  relations,  senseless  imbe- 
ciles or  unmitigated  scoundrels  all,  as  her  husband  testi- 
fies ;  by  Mrs.  Gamp,  by  Barkis,  and  even  the  young  man 


350 


HOME  LIFE  OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 


by  the  name  of  Guppy.  A  smile  spreads  over  the  face 
of  the  whole  reading  world  at  the  bare  mention  of  their 
names.  How  the  smiles  deepen  into  tears  as  we  think 
over  the  other  friends  to  whom  he  has  introduced  us,  — 
mutual  friends  of  us  all ;  of  whom  we  talk  when  we  con- 
gregate together,  with  just  as  much  of  real  feeling  and 
interest  as  we  do  of  other  friends  of  flesh  and  blood, 
laugh  over  their  foibles  and  follies,  pity  their  sorrows, 
blame  their  acts,  and  all  with  no  other  feeling  than  that  of 
utter  reality. 

Will  little  Nell's  friend,  the  old  schoolmaster,  ever  cease 
to  draw  tears  from  our  eyes?  Shall  we  ever  weary  of 
gentle  Tom  Pinch?  Shall  we  not  always  touch  our  hats 
to  Joe  Gargery  ?  Shall  we  ever  cease  loving  Mr.  Jarn- 
dyce,  even  when  the  wind  is  in  the  east?  And  will 
Agnes  and  Esther  ever  pall  upon  our  taste?  Not,  we 
verily  believe,  until  the  sources  of  feeling  are  dried  up  in 
us  forever,  and  we  have  grown  indifferent  to  all  of  earth. 
What  an  array  of  them  there  are,  too  !  The  bare  cata- 
logue of  their  names  would  fill  a  volume,  and  it  would  not 
be  bad  reading  to  the  genuine  Dickens  lover,  —  recalling, 
as  each  name  would,  so  much  of  vivid  portrayal,  and 
starting  so  many  associations  in  the  mind.  But  there  is 
no  need  to  repeat  the  names ;  the  big,  dull  old  world 
long  ago  learned  them  by  heart.  Nor  will  they  soon  be 
relegated  to  the  shades.  While  the  tide  of  English  speech 
flows  on,  they  will  linger,  component  parts  of  the  language 
itself. 


GEORGE    ELIOT. 


WHILE  the  great  woman  who  wrote  under  the  nom 
de  plume  of  George  Eliot  was  aHve,  there  was 
much  appreciative  interest  and  much  unlawful  curiosity 
felt  regarding  her  private  life.  This  as  a  matter  of  course. 
No  such  striking  personahty  as  hers  could  project  itself  into 
a  time  of  dulness  and  mediocrity  without  exciting  unusual 
interest  and  attention.  And  the  half-knowledge  which  had 
been  gained  of  her  life  and  character  served  as  an  active 
stimulus  to  this  curiosity.  One  or  two  leading  facts  in  her 
history  had  become  known  and  had  been  made  the  most  of 
by  a  gossip-loving  time  ;  but  aside  from  these  isolated  facts 
there  was  very  little  known  of  George  Eliot,  except  by  a 
little  close  circle  of  personal  friends,  who  seem  to  have 
refrained  in  a  remarkable  manner  from  writing  of  her  in 
the  newspapers.  That  modern  and  almost  purely  Ameri- 
can institution,  the  interviewer,  allowed  her  to  escape, 
and  even  up  to  the  time  of  her  death  comparatively  little 
was  said  of  her  except  as  a  writer  of  books.  But  the  in- 
terest in  her  as  a  woman  has  been  deepening  constantly 
since  her  death,  fed  by  some  half-revelations  which  have 
been  made ;  and  few  books  of  our  own  time  have  been 
so  eagerly  anticipated  and  so  universally  sought  after  as 
the  biography  by  her  husband,  which  lately  appeared. 
Here  at  last  we  have  that  wonderful  woman  painted  by 
her  own  hand ;  not  in  an  autobiography,  where  a  person 
poses  for  the  public,  but  in  the  private  letters  and  journals 


352  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

of  a  lifetime.  Like  Mrs.  Carlyle,  she  had  unconsciously 
drawn  her  own  portrait  from  day  to  day.  An  admiring 
world  looks  upon  the  work,  and  with  one  voice  must  pro- 
nounce it  well  done.  For  it  is  easy  to  gather  from  these 
unconscious  touches  everything  of  real  importance  in  re- 
gard to  the  character  and  life  of  this  woman.  Much  as 
we  should  have  enjoyed  the  letters  and  journals  in  a 
complete  form,  untouched  by  pruning  fingers,  we  cannot 
but  heartily  approve  the  wisdom  of  Mr.  Cross  in  carefully 
selecting  and  editing  them.  He  has  shown  himself  a 
person  of  excellent  taste  and  judgment,  and  one  could 
scarcely  ask  to  fall  into  better  hands,  if  one's  life  must  be 
given  to  the  public  at  all  when  one  has  travelled  away 
from  the  things  of  time  and  sense. 

Let  us  see,  then,  what  manner  of  woman  this  was  who 
held  a  world  entranced  by  the  splendor  of  her  genius  for 
so  many  years.  Here  is  one  of  the  earliest  ghmpses  of 
the  child  :  — 

"  Any  one  who  happened  to  look  through  the  windows  of 
Griff  House  would  have  seen  a  pretty  picture  in  the  dining- 
room  Saturday  evening  after  tea.  The  powerful,  middle- 
aged  man,  with  the  strongly  marked  features,  sits  in  his 
deep  leather-covered  arm-chair  at  the  right-hand  corner  of 
the  ruddy  fire-place,  with  the  head  of  the  '  little  wench  '  be- 
tween his  knees.  The  child  turns  over  the  book  with  pic- 
tures which  she  wishes  her  father  to  explain  to  her,  or 
that  perhaps  she  prefers  explaining  to  him.  Her  rebellious 
hair  is  all  over  her  eyes,  much  vexing  the  pale,  energetic 
mother  who  sits  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  fire,  cumbered 
with  much  service,  letting  no  instant  of  time  escape  the  in- 
evitable click  of  the  knitting-needles.  The  father  is  already 
proud  of  the  astonishing  and  growing  intelligence  of  his  little 
girl.  An  old-fashioned  child,  already  living  in  a  world  of  her 
own  imagination,  impressible  to  her  finger-tips,  and  ready 
to  give  her  views  upon  any  subject." 

To  readers  of  "  The  Mill  on  the  Floss  "  little  descrip- 
tion of  her  child-life  will  be  necessary.  She  has,  in 
Maggie,  pictured  herself  as  nearly  as  possible  during 
childhood.     Here  is  her  own  description  :  — 


GEORGE  ELIOT.  353 

"  A  creature  full  of  eager,  passionate  longings  for  all  that 
was  beautiful  and  glad  5  thirsty  for  all  knowledge  ;  with  an 
ear  straining  after  dreamy  music  that  died  away,  and  would 
not  come  to  her  ;  with  a  bhnd,  unconscious  yearning  for 
something  that  would  link  together  the  wonderful  impres- 
sions of  this  mysterious  life  and  give  her  soul  a  sense  of 
home  in  it.  No  wonder,  when  there  is  this  contrast  between 
the  outward  and  the  inward,  that  painful  collisions  come 
of  it." 

In  Adam  Bede  we  have  a  partial  portrait  of  her  father, 
and  there  are  other  striking  resemblances  to  him  in  Caleb 
Garth,  although  neither  character  is  to  be  really  identified 
with  him.  Mrs.  Poyser  bears  the  same  partial  relation  to 
her  mother.  With  these  people  for  the  dra^natis personcBy 
the  drama  could  scarcely  fail  to  be  a  striking  one.  The 
relation  existing  between  herself  and  her  sister  is  described 
in  "  Dorothea  and  Celia,"  —  no  intellectual  affinity,  but 
strong  family  affection.  The  repression  of  these  early 
years  she  afterwards  refers  to  in  saying,  — 

"  You  may  try,  but  you  can  never  imagine,  what  it  is  to 
have  a  man's  force  of  genius  in  you,  and  yet  to  suffer  the 
slavery  of  being  a  girl." 

During  her  early  youth  she  writes  thus  to  a  friend  :  — 

"  I  really  feel  for  you,  sacrificing  as  you  are  your  own 
tastes  and  comforts  for  the  pleasure  of  others,  and  that  in  a 
manner  the  most  trying  to  rebellious  flesh  and  blood  ;  for  I 
verily  believe  that  in  most  cases  it  requires  more  of  a  martyr's 
spirit  to  endure  with  patience  and  cheerfulness  daily  cross- 
ings and  interruptions  of  our  petty  desires  and  pursuits  and 
to  rejoice  in  them,  if  they  can  be  made  to  conduce  to  God's 
glory  and  our  own  sanctification,  than  even  to  lay  down  our 
lives  for  the  truth." 

Deep  religious  feeling  was  one  of  the  most  striking 
characteristics  of  this  period  of  her  youth.  On  her  nine- 
teenth birthday  she  writes  :  — 

23 


354  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

"May  the  Lord  give  me  such  an  insight  into  what  is  truly 
good  that  I  may  not  rest  contented  with  making  Christianity 
a  mere  addendum  to  my  pursuits,  or  with  tacking  it  as  a 
mere  fringe  to  my  garments  !  May  I  seek  to  be  sanctified 
wholly  ! " 

This  religious  feeling  she  carried  with  her  throughout 
life,  although  she  soon  left  behind  her  the  tenets  and 
creeds  of  the  church  in  which  she  was  bom  and  for 
which  she  had  so  strong  an  affection.  In  later  hfe,  al- 
though placing  herself  entirely  outside  of  historic  Christi- 
anity, and  becoming  a  rationalist  of  the  rationalists,  the 
fervor  of  strong  religious  feeling  never  left  her,  and  to  her 
latest  days  she  loved  to  read  the  Scriptures  and  to  feel  the 
glow  of  devotional  feeling  which  belonged  to  her  nature. 
The  strong  and  powerful  motive  of  her  life  in  youth  and 
age  was  the  intense  desire  to  aid  and  help  the  world,  for 
which  she  felt  a  compassion  so  strong  as  to  remind  one  of 
the  descriptions  given  of  Buddha  in  Eastern  song  and 
story.  In  every  period  of  her  life,  in  her  most  private 
letters  and  journals,  this  burden  of  the  world's  sorrow 
seemed  to  find  expression,  and  her  pitying  love  was  al- 
most Christ-like  in  its  tenderness. 

In  forming  an  estimate  of  the  woman  we  must  never 
lose  sight  of  this  predominating  feeling.  Next  to  it  in  in- 
tensity is  to  be  placed  the  longing  for  love  and  sympathy, 
the  strength  of  the  affections.  No  such  deeply  loving 
human  heart  has  been  pictured  to  the  world  in  all  the 
realm  of  books.  To  those  who  have  been  accustomed  to 
think  of  George  Eliot  as  the  master-mind  of  her  time,  the 
greatest  intellect  of  her  generation,  the  revelation  of  her 
heart  will  be  a  great  surprise  and  delight.  A  deep,  strong, 
passionate,  loving  human  soul,  with  heights  and  depths  of 
devotion  and  tenderness  unthinkable  even  to  the  poorer 
natures  around  her,  —  it  was  in  this  that  both  her  strength 
and  her  weakness  lay.  This  affectionateness  was  shown 
in  her  youth  in  her  devotion  to  her  father,  whose  home 
she  kept  for  several  years,  and  in  lavish  regard  for  the  few 
friends  who  were  near  her,  all  of  whom  she  retained  and 


GEORGE  ELIOT.  3^^ 

loved  to  her  dying  day.  It  was  shown  later  on  in  the 
passionate  and  absorbing  love  she  gave  to  Mr.  Lewes 
throughout  a  lifetime,  and  which  seemed  but  to  deepen 
and  widen  with  the  years ;  and  in  the  tenderness  and 
thoughtfulness  of  the  mother-love  she  gave  to  his  children, 
and  which  seems  to  lack  not  one  of  the  elements  of 
real  maternal  feeling.  This  strong,  pitying,  passionate 
love  of  hers  —  a  love  hardly  to  be  conceived  of  by  cold 
and  self-contained  natures  —  is  the  key  to  the  one  action 
of  her  life  requiring  apology  and  charitable  construction. 
In  the  first  place,  she  pitied  Mr.  Lewes  for  the  sorrows 
of  his  life  and  for  the  unfaithfulness  of  the  wife  upon 
whom  he  had  lavished  his  heart's  devotion,  and  whom  he 
had  forgiven  for  the  first  offence,  only  to  be  deceived  the 
second  time.  Next,  the  strong  feeling  for  justice  which 
characterized  her  nature  rebelled  against  that  law  which 
bound  him  to  this  unfaithful  wife  simply  because  he  had 
once  forgiven  her ;  and,  finally,  the  desire  she  felt  to  com- 
fort his  loneliness  and  redeem  his  life  overcame  all  the 
scruples  which  the  integrity  of  her  nature  must  have  con- 
fronted her  with,  and  she  defied  the  law  which  was  odious 
to  her  and  the  conventionalities  which  were  dear  to  her,  in 
the  same  act,  and  assumed  the  tie  which  held  her  in  such 
loyal  allegiance  until  death  severed  it.  Here  is  the  only 
allusion  she  made  to  it  in  all  her  correspondence,  as  far  as 
we  know.  This  was  written  to  one  of  her  oldest  friends, 
Mrs.  Bray. 

"  If  there  is  any  one  action  or  relation  of  my  life  which  is, 
and  always  has  been,  profoundly  serious,  it  is  my  relation  to 
Mr.  Lewes.  It  is,  however,  natural  enough  that  you  should 
mistake  me  in  many  ways,  for  not  only  are  you  unacquainted 
with  Mr.  Lewes's  real  character,  and  the  course  of  his  ac- 
tions, but  also  it  is  several  years  since  you  and  I  were  much 
together,  and  it  is  possible  that  the  modifications  my  mind 
has  undergone  may  be  quite  in  the  opposite  direction  of  what 
you  imagine.  No  one  can  be  better  aware  than  yourself  that 
it  is  possible  for  two  people  to  hold  different  opinions  on 
momentous  subjects  with  equal  sincerity  and  an  equally  ear- 


356  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

nest  conviction  that  their  respective  opinions  are  alone  the 
truly  moral  ones.  If  we  differ  on  the  subject  of  the  marriage 
laws.  I  at  least  can  believe  that  you  cleave  to  what  you  be- 
lieve to  be  good,  and  I  don't  know  of  anything  in  the  nature 
of  your  views  that  should  prevent  you  from  believing  the 
same  of  me.  How  far  we  differ  I  think  we  neither  of  us 
know  ;  for  I  am  ignorant  of  your  precise  views,  and  appar- 
ently you  attribute  to  me  both  feelings  and  opinions  which 
are  not  mine.  We  cannot  set  each  other  right  in  letters; 
but  one  thing  I  can  tell  you  in  few  words.  Light  and  easily 
broken  ties  are  what  I  neither  desire  theoretically  nor  could 
live  for  practically.  Women  who  are  satisfied  with  such  ties 
do  not  act  as  I  have  done.  That  any  unworldly,  unsupersti- 
tious  person  who  is  sufficiently  acquainted  with  the  realities 
of  life  can  pronounce  my  relation  to  Mr.  Lewes  immoral,  I 
can  only  understand  by  remembering  how  subtle  and  com- 
plex are  the  influences  which  mould  opinion.  But  I  do  re- 
member this,  and  I  indulge  in  no  arrogant  or  uncharitable 
thoughts  about  those  who  condemn  us,  even  though  we 
might  have  expected  a  somewhat  different  verdict.  From 
the  majority  of  persons  we  never,  of  course,  looked  for  any- 
thing but  condemnation.  We  are  leading  no  life  of  self- 
indulgence,  except,  indeed,  that  being  happy  in  each  other 
we  find  everything  easy.  We  are  working  hard  to  provide 
for  others  better  than  we  provide  for  ourselves,  and  to  fulfil 
every  responsibility  that  lies  upon  us." 

These  responsibilities  were  not  light,  for  they  were  poor 
and  not  yet  famous,  and  must  support  by  their  pens  not 
only  themselves,  but  three  boys  of  Mr.  Lewes,  and  their 
mother.  This  they  found  no  easy  thing  to  do  at  first; 
but  when  the  great  success  of  George  Eliot's  novels  had 
been  attained,  their  financial  affairs  became  easy,  and 
continued  so  to  the  end. 

Their  life  together  seemed  to  be  one  of  unbroken  love 
and  confidence,  their  delight  in  each  other  increasing,  if 
possible,  with  time.  The  letters  and  journals  of  George 
Eliot  are  full  of  expressions  of  this  love  and  trust,  and 
give  us  very  pleasing  pictures  of  the  character  and  life  of 
Mr.  Lewes.  He  seems  to  have  been  an  eminently  genial, 
kind,  loving,  and  appreciative  man ;  a  man,  too,  of  fasci- 


GEORGE  ELIOT.  357 

nating  manners  and  wonderfully  keen  intellect,  though 
totally  lacking  in  any  such  genius  as  that  which  has  made 
George  Eliot  immortal.  Charming  glimpses  of  their 
home  life  occur  on  every  page,  —  a  home  life  that  was 
sweet  and  well  ordered,  pervaded  by  such  a  spirit  of 
love  and  devotion  as  would  sanctify  any  home.  George 
Eliot  was  the  most  womanly  of  women,  despite  what 
is  often  called  her  masculine  intellect ;  and  she  made 
a  genuine  home,  after  the  true  and  womanly  fashion,  de- 
lighting in  good  order  and  neatness  and  such  attention 
to  details  as  is  an  absolute  necessity  in  the  formation 
of  a  happy  home.  She  never  allowed  her  literary  work 
to  prevent  her  from  overseeing  that  home,  and  in  her 
younger  days  seems  to  have  had  a  real  taste  for  executing 
these  housekeeping  details  herself.  There  was  no  re- 
mote hint  of  Mrs.  Jellyby  in  her,  but  strong,  practical 
common-sense  in  all  the  management  of  her  family  affairs, 
and  a  real  delight  in  having  all  things  well  ordered  and 
agreeable  in  her  home.  This  is  one  of  the  most  pleasing 
of  the  many  revelations  of  this  book.  We  love  to  know 
that  she  was  a  true  woman,  and  no  intellectual  monstrosity. 
The  glimpses  that  are  given  of  her  nursing  her  father 
through  his  long  last  sickness  are  very  sweet  and  touching, 
and  everything  connected  with  her  devotion  to  Mr.  Lewes's 
children,  down  to  poor  Thornie's  death,  makes  us  love 
her  more  and  more.  Indeed,  it  is  a  strong,  pure,  loving, 
and  noble  woman  that  is  brought  out  on  every  page  of 
this  Life.  But  a  very  sad  and  deep-thoughted  woman, 
too ;  one  to  whom  pity  goes  out  as  naturally  as  love. 
She  was  afflicted  with  ill  health  all  her  life,  and  the  record 
of  all  this  suffering  is  at  times  oppressive.  One  can- 
not help  wishing  that  we  might  have  had  the  same 
woman  strong  and  well,  and  wondering  what  sort  of  books 
would  have  been  the  result.  Far  pleasanter  and  more 
cheering,  no  doubt,  for  some  of  them  are  heart- breakingly 
sad  as  it  is,  but  perhaps  no  deeper  or  truer.  Then,  too, 
she  suffered  keenly  through  her  sympathies,  feehng  for  all 
loss  and  wrong  with  the  acutest  pain ;  and  her  lack  of 


358 


HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 


faith  intensified  all  her  suffering.  So  did  lack  of  hope  ; 
for  she  was  almost  as  destitute  of  this  cheering  friend 
of  man  as  Carlyle  himself,  and  was  given  to  despond- 
ency as  the  sparks  fly  upward.  In  her  earlier  writing  the 
tears  and  smiles  are  blended,  her  humor  hghting  up  the 
dark  places ;  but  the  deepening  years  deepened  her 
gloom,  and  her  later  writing  is  sombre  almost  throughout. 
Yet  she  had  great  capacity  for  joy  as  well  as  for  sorrow, 
and  enjoyed  with  the  utmost  intensity  the  brighter  parts 
of  life,  and  retained  this  sense  of  the  pleasure  of  life  even 
to  the  end.  She  speaks  much  of  the  intense  happiness 
of  her  life  with  Mr.  Lewes,  and  they  seem  never  to  have 
been  separated,  taking  all  journeys  and  holidays  together, 
and  never  wearying  of  what  she  calls  their  ^^  solitude  a 
deux"  Such  expressions  as  these  are  very  frequent 
throughout  the  book  :  — 

"  I  never  have  anything  to  call  out  my  ill-humor  or  discon- 
tent, —  which  you  know  was  always  ready  enough  to  come 
on  slight  call, — and  I  have  everything  to  call  out  love  and 
gratitude.  I  am  very  happy,  —  happy  in  the  highest  blessing 
life  can  give  us,  the  perfect  love  and  sympathy  of  a  nature 
that  stimulates  my  own  to  healthful  activity.  My  life  has 
deepened  unspeakably  during  the  last  year.  I  feel  a  greater 
capacity  for  moral  and  intellectual  enjoyment,  a  more  acute 
sense  of  my  deficiencies  in  the  past,  a  more  solemn  desire  to 
be  faithful  to  coming  duties,  than  I  remember  at  any  former 
period  of  my  life.  And  my  happiness  has  deepened,  too ; 
the  blessedness  of  a  perfect  love  and  union  grows  daily. 
Few  women,  I  fear,  have  had  such  reason  as  I  have  to  think 
the  long,  sad  years  of  youth  were  worth  living  for  the  sake 
of  middle  age." 

And  this  extract  from  the  journal  of  Mr.  Lewes  leaves 
us  his  thought  about  their  life,  which  is  so  like  her 
own  :  — 

"  I  owe  Spencer  another  and  a  deeper  debt.  It  was 
through  him  that  I  learned  to  know  Marian,  —  to  know  her 
was  to  love  her,  —  and  since  then  my  life  has  been  a  new 


GEORGE  ELIOT. 


359 


birth.     To  her  I  owe  all  my  prosperity  and  all  my  happiness. 
God  bless  her  !  " 

That  her  great  books  would  ever  have  been  written 
without  this  loving  sympathy  and  appreciation  on  the  part 
of  Mr.  Lewes,  seems  extremely  doubtful.  She  needed 
encouragement  at  every  step,  being  prone  to  despair  about 
her  writings,  and  she  had  the  utmost  reliance  upon  the 
judgment  and  taste  of  the  companion  of  her  hfe.  And 
he  seems  to  have  been  everything  that  heart  could  desire 
as  loving  critic  and  counsellor.  Her  sympathy  with  the 
lives  and  hopes  of  others  is  very  charming,  particularly 
with  the  love  and  marriage  of  their  eldest  boy,  though 
it  is  shown  constantly  in  a  true  womanly  way;  as,  for 
instance  :  — 

"  A  pretty  thing  has  happened  to  an  acquaintance  of  mine, 
which  is  quite  a  tonic  to  one's  hope.  She  has  all  her  life 
been  working  in  various  ways,  as  housekeeper,  governess, 
etc., — a  dear  little  dot  about  four  feet  eleven  in  height; 
pleasant  to  look  at  and  clever  ;  a  working-woman  without 
any  of  those  epicene  queernesses  that  belong  to  the  class. 
More  than  once  she  has  told  me  that  courage  quite  forsook 
her.  She  felt  there  was  no  good  in  living  and  striving. 
Well,  a  man  of  fortune  and  accomplishments  has  just  fallen 
in  love  with  her  —  now  she  is  thirty-three.  It  is  the  prettiest 
story  of  a  swift-decided  passion,  and  made  me  cry  for  joy. 

Madame  B and  I  went  with  her  to   buy  her  wedding 

clothes.     If  you  will  only  imagine  all  I  have  not  said,  you 
will  think  this  a  very  charming  fairy  tale." 

In  1878  her  happy  companionship  with  the  man  she 
had  so  passionately  loved  was  ended  by  his  death.  The 
only  entry  in  her  diary  in  1879  is  this  :  "  Here  I  and  sor- 
row sit."  The  desolation  of  her  life  told  terribly  upon 
her  health  and  spirits.  She  saw  no  one,  wrote  to  no  one, 
had  no  thoughts,  as  she  tells  us,  for  many  months.  Among 
the  first  lines  she  wrote  were  these  :  — 

"  Some  time,  if  I  live,  I  shall  be  able  to  see  you,  — perhaps 
sooner  than  any  one  else,  —  but  not  yet.     Life  seems  to  get 


360  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

harder  instead  of  easier.  When  I  said  some  time,  I  meant 
still  a  distant  time.  I  want  to  live  a  little  time,  that  I  may 
do  certain  things  for  his  sake.  So  I  try  to  keep  up  my 
strength,  and  I  work  as  much  as  I  can  to  save  my  mind  from 
imbecility.  But  that  is  all  at  present.  But  what  used  to  be 
joy  is  joy  no  longer,  and  what  is  pain  is  easier,  because  he 
has  not  to  bear  it." 

Again :  — 

"You  must  excuse  my  weakness,  remembering  that  for 
nearly  twenty-five  years  I  have  been  used  to  find  my  happiness 
in  his.  I  can  find  it  nowhere  else.  But  we  can  live  and  be 
helpful  without  happiness,  and  I  have  had  more  than  myriads 
who  were  and  are  better  fitted  for  it." 

As  soon  as  she  was  able  to  see  any  friends,  Mr.  Cross, 
who  was  an  old  and  valued  one,  began  to  visit  her  and 
be  helpful  to  her  in  many  ways,  and  he  soon  became  a 
comfort  to  that  gentle  nature  to  which  some  prop  was 
indispensable.  She  grew  accustomed  to  him,  and  began 
to  rely  upon  his  support.  After  a  while  she  could  read 
with  him,  and  her  mind  renewed  its  vigor.  Still  later  she 
could  play  for  him,  and  the  consolation  of  music  was 
added  to  her  life.  As  the  months  went  by  she  leaned 
upon  him  more  and  more,  and  found  real  comfort  in  his 
kindly  ministrations.  This  is  the  first  allusion  to  him  in 
her  letters  :  — 

"  I  have  a  comfortable  country  practitioner  to  watch  over 

me  from  day  to  day,   and  there  is    a   devoted   friend  who 

is  backward  and  forward  continually  to  see  that  I  lack 
nothing." 

Of  the  outcome  of  that  watchful  tenderness  Mr.  Cross 

says  :  — 

"  As  the  year  went  on  George  Eliot  began  to  see  all  her 
old  friends  again.  But  her  hfe  was  nevertheless  a  life  of 
heart-loneliness.  Accustomed  as  she  had  been  for  so  many 
years  to  solitude  d  deux,  the  want  of  close  companionship 
continued  to  be  very  bitterly  felt.  She  was  in  the  habit  of 
going  with  me  very  frequently  to  the  National  Gallery  and 


GEORGE  ELIOT.  361 

to  other  exhibitions  of  pictures.  This  constant  companion- 
ship engrossed  me  completely  and  was  a  new  interest  to  her. 
A  bond  of  mutual  dependence  had  been  formed  between  us. 
It  was  finally  decided  that  our  marriage  should  take  place  as 
soon  and  as  privately  as  possible." 

She  writes  thus  of  this  marriage  :  — 

"  All  this  is  wonderful  blessing  falling  to  me  beyond  my 
share,  after  I  had  thought  that  my  life  was  ended,  and  that, 
so  to  speak,  my  coffin  was  ready  for  me  in  the  next  room. 
Deep  down  below  there  is  a  hidden  river  of  sadness,  but  this 
must  always  be  with  those  who  have  lived  so  long  ;  but  I 
am  able  to  enjoy  my  newly  reopened  life.  I  shall  be  a  better, 
more  loving  creature  than  I  could  have  been  in  solitude.  To 
be  constantly,  lovingly  grateful  for  the  gift  of  a  perfect  love 
is  the  best  illumination  of  one's  mind  to  all  the  possible  good 
there  may  be  in  store  for  man  on  this  troublous  little  planet- 
I  was  getting  hard,  and  if  I  had  decided  differently  I  think  I 
should  have  become  selfish. 

"  The  whole  history  is  something  like  a  miracle-legend. 
But  instead  of  any  former  affection  being  displaced,  I  seem 
to  have  recovered  the  loving  sympathy  that  I  was  in  danger 
of  losing.  I  mean  that  I  had  been  conscious  of  a  certain 
drying-up  of  tenderness  in  me,  and  that  now  the  spring 
seems  to  have  risen  again." 

The  consolations  of  this  new  love  and  tenderness  were 
to  cheer  her  but  a  little  time,  for  they  were  scarcely 
settled  in  the  new  home  after  the  trip  abroad,  during 
which  time  she  had  excellent  health  and  enjoyed  every- 
thing much,  before  the  final  illness  came,  and  "  the  fever 
called  living  was  over  at  last." 

Amid  the  falling  of  the  bitter  rain  of  winter,  in  the 
deadliest  desolation  of  the  year,  they  bore  her  to  her  rest 
amid  the  silent.  She  whose  speech  has  endeared  her  to 
the  whole  thinking  world,  whose  thoughts  have  borne 
us  hke  an  anthem  ever  upward  to  the  loftiest  and  the 
best,  all  her  sacred  service  done,  shall  know  hereafter  no 
more  work,  no  more  device,  but  the  deep  calm  of  rest, 
untroubled  by  the  vexing  sights  and  shows  of  time. 


362  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

We  cannot  think  that  she  met  the  solemn,  swift  re- 
lease with  dread.  She  looked  too  deeply  into  life  to 
make  of  it  a  mere  thing  of  daily  bread,  of  common 
homely  joys  and  trifling  labors ;  but  all  its  sorest  problems 
weighed  her  down,  and  all  its  deepest  doubt  and  dull  de- 
spairing went  with  her  to  the  last,  saddening  even  the 
happiest  moments  of  her  Hfe.  And  the  falling  of  that 
cold  and  solemn  winter  rain  into  that  grave,  about  which 
gathered  many  of  the  greatest  minds  in  England  with 
reverent  tears,  seems  not  sad  but  sweet,  —  a  kind  re- 
lease from  the  stress  and  strain  of  a  tumultuous  existence. 
Nevermore  will  that  still  heart  be  crushed  and  riven  by 
wrongs  and  woes  which  she  has  no  power  to  aid ;  never- 
more Hfe's  terrors  hold  and  o'ermaster  her ;  nevermore  a 
questioning  world  look  upon  her  in  judgment.  With  the 
great  of  every  time  and  nation  she  has  at  last  taken  her 
place,  and  will  hold  it  evermore. 


CHARLES    KINGSLEY. 

CHARLES  KINGSLEY  was  born  at  Holne  Vicar- 
age, under  the  brow  of  Dartmore,  in  1819  ;  but  his 
family  removed  almost  immediately  into  Nottinghamshire, 
although  he  always  felt  himself  to  be,  and  called  himself,  a 
Devonshire  man.  Of  his  parents  he  himself  gives  account 
as  follows  :  — 

"  We  are  but  the  disjecta  membra  of  a  most  remarkable 
pair  of  parents.  Our  talent,  such  as  it  is,  is  altogether  hered- 
itary. My  father  was  a  magnificent  man  in  body  and  mind, 
and  was  said  to  possess  every  talent  except  that  of  using  his 
talents.  My  mother,  on  the  contrary,  had  a  quite  extraor- 
dinary practical  and  administrative  power  ;  and  she  com- 
bines with  it,  even  at  her  advanced  age  (seventy-nine),  my 
father's  passion  for  knowledge,  and  the  sentiment  and  fancy 
of  a  young  girl." 

The  product  of  the  union  of  such  characters  could 
hardly  be  otherwise  than  unique ;  and  we  see  in  Charles 
Kingsley  a  man  of  powerful  nature,  —  strong,  aggressive, 
administrative,  —  but  at  the  same  time  deeply  poetical, 
and  tender  almost  to  weakness.  We  find  in  him  a  union 
of  the  intensest  sympathy  with  the  weak  and  helpless, 
and  a  comprehension  of  the  flaws  and  defects  which 
make  up  their  character,  which  seems  at  times  merciless 
and  almost  heartless.  We  find  in  him  remarkable  com- 
bative power,  united  to  a  desire  to  use  that  power  purely 
and  simply  for  the  defence  and  protection  of  those  who 


364 


HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 


are  unable  to  protect  and  help  themselves.  We  find  a 
man  who  can  deal  heaviest  blows,  who  loves  the  excite- 
ment of  a  battle,  and  never  shuns  an  occasion  for  a  fight 
in  behalf  of  humanity,  but  who  was  so  sensitive  to  an 
unfair  thrust  from  an  opponent  that  his  life  was  perma- 
nently embittered  by  the  injustice  and  malignity  of  literary 
and  political  critics  of  the  opposing  party.  In  short,  he 
united  a  royal  aggressiveness  shaped  and  guided  entirely 
by  his  Christian  principles,  and  a  tenderness  and  sensitive- 
ness such  as  are  rarely  found  in  so  strong  and  fearless 
a  man. 

In  childhood  he  is  described  as  strong  and  active,  but 
not  expert  at  any  games  ;  while  he  bore  pain  wonderfully 
well,  and  excelled  in  all  feats  that  required  nerve  and 
daring.  He  was  well  prepared  when  he  went  to  Cam- 
bridge, and  obtained  a  scholarship  at  Magdalen  the  first 
year.  He  disliked  the  prescribed  course  intensely,  and 
sometimes  neglected  his  work  and  gave  himself  up  to 
wild  sport  in  the  fens,  which  then  presented  much  of 
the  bleak  picturesqueness  which  he  has  immortalized  in 
his  prose  idyls.  He  was  very  popular,  but  not  very 
sociable,  and  lived  then,  as  afterwards,  a  most  strenuous 
life.  On  July  6,  1839,  while  visiting  in  Oxfordshire,  he 
met  his  future  wife,  Fanny,  the  daughter  of  Pascoe 
Grenfell  and  Georgiana  St.  Leger  his  wife.  Circum- 
stances seemed  to  give  the  lover  very  Httle  hope,  and 
in  intervals  of  recklessness  Kingsley  often  dreamed  and 
talked  of  going  to  America  and  joining  the  wild  hunters 
on  the  prairies.  Had  he  done  so,  what  bits  of  strong 
and  striking  description  should  we  not  have  had  !  Few 
writers  have  the  photographic  accuracy  of  Kingsley, 
united  to  so  vivid  an  imagination ;  consequently  his 
pictures  are  all  of  striking  quality.  Look  at  this  char- 
acteristic bit,  when  Amyas  and  his  friends  walk  to  the 
cliffs  of  Lundy  :  — 

"  As  they  approached,  a  raven,  who  sat  upon  the  topmost 
stone,  black  against  the  bright  blue  sky,  flapped  lazily  away, 


CHARLES  KINGSLEY.  365 

and  sunk  down  the  abysses  of  the  chff,  as  if  he  had  scented 
the  corpses  beneath  the  surge.  Below  them  from  the  gull- 
rock  rose  a  thousand  birds,  and  filled  the  air  with  sound  ; 
the  choughs  cackled,  the  hacklets  wailed,  the  great  black- 
backs  laughed  querulous  defiance  at  the  intruders,  and  a 
single  falcon  with. an  angry  bark  darted  out  beneath  their 
feet,  and  hung  poised  high  aloft,  watching  the  sea-fowl  which 
swung  slowly  round  and  round  below." 

In  all  his  books  we  have  these  glowing  pictures  of 
the  natural  world,  intense,  graven  in  as  it  were  with  a 
burin,  and  colored  with  tropical  magnificence. 

Soon  after  taking  orders  Charles  Kingsley  was  given 
the  living  of  Eversley,  which  he  retained  to  the  end  of  his 
hfe.  His  work  there  was  full  of  hardship ;  but  he  was 
young  and  strong,  and  had  a  superabundant  energy  which 
no  toil  daunted.  Eversley  was  a  democratic  parish  of 
"heth  croppers,"  and  there  were  few  gentry  within  its 
borders.  These  peasants  were  hereditary  poachers  on 
Windsor  Forest  and  other  preserves  in  the  neighborhood, 
and  possessed  one  and  all  \vith  a  spirit  of  almost  lawless 
independence.  But  it  was  one  of  Kingsley's  most  ami- 
able characteristics  through  life  to  be  able  to  make  friends 
of  uncultivated  people  without  any  painful  effort  of  con- 
descension. He  visited  these  poor  people  of  his  parish 
constantly,  until  he  knew  every  person  intimately,  and 
could  speak  to  each  with  a  knowledge  of  his  inmost 
needs ;  and  their  needs,  in  most  cases,  were  of  a  very 
earthly  and  commonplace  kind. 

"  What  is  the  use,"  he  would  say,  "  of  my  talking  to  a 
lot  of  hungry  paupers  about  heaven?  Sir,  as  my  clerk 
said  to  me  yesterday,  there  is  a  weight  on  their  hearts, 
and  they  care  for  no  hope  and  no  change,  for  they  know 
they  can  be  no  worse  off  than  they  are."  But  he  did 
better  for  them  than  to  preach  far-away  sermons  above 
their  comprehension.  "  If  a  man  or  woman  were  suffer- 
ing or  dying,  he  would  go  to  them  five  or  six  times  a 
day,  —  and  night  as  well  as  day,  —  for  his  own  heart's  sake 
as  well  as  for  their  soul's  sake."     And  he  won  the  respect 


366  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

of  these  people  for  the  Church  which  they  had  long  neg- 
lected, and  which  had  ceased  to  stand  for  anything  to 
them,  until,  '•  when  he  announced  the  first  confirmation, 
and  invited  all  who  wished  to  take  advantage  of  it  to 
come  to  the  rectory  on  a  certain  evening  for  instruction, 
the  stud  groom  from  Sir  John  Cope's,  a  respectable  man 
of  five-and-thirty,  was  among  the  first  to  come,  bringing  a 
message  from  the  whips  and  stablemen  to  say  that  they  had 
all  been  confirmed  once,  but  if  Mr.  Kingsley  wished  it  they 
would  all  be  happy  to  come  again."  This  was  at  a  time 
when  England  was  in  a  really  dangerous  state  of  tumult 
and  discontent,  and  when  the  Church,  through  the  heart- 
lessness  and  folly  of  its  leaders,  had  lost  almost  all  hold 
upon  the  people.  Is  there  not  in  it  a  hint  to  the  unsuc- 
cessful preachers  of  our  time  ? 

In  a  few  yeai-s  he  had  raised  the  whole  parish  of  Eversley 
to  a  higher  level,  and  had  set  his  mark  upon  every  indi- 
vidual soul  in  his  keeping.  And  after  he  had  been 
appointed  to  the  canonry  of  Westminster,  and  was 
called  to  preach  to  immense  congregations  there,  he 
felt  the  burden  of  these  new  souls,  as  he  had  felt  that 
of  his  more  humble  charge.  He  felt  that  he  was  per- 
sonally called  to  speak  some  vital  word  to  every  soul 
within  his  hearing,  and  the  strain  upon  him  was  great,  as 
he  realized  how  difficult  a  thing  this  was  to  do  in  these 
later  days.  He  expressed  his  sense  of  this  responsibility 
in  his  characteristic  way.  "  Whenever,"  he  said,  "  I  walk 
along  the  choir  to  the  pulpit  I  wish  myself  dead ;  and 
whenever  I  walk  back  I  wish  myself  more  dead."  But 
though  his  sense  of  failure  was  great,  it  is  certain  that  those 
noble  sermons  in  the  grand  abbey  left  their  ineffaceable 
mark  upon  some  of  that  multitude  of  young  men  who 
crowded  the  north  and  south  transepts  of  the  abbey,  and 
stood  there  for  two  hours  through  a  long  musical  service, 
that  they  might  hear  Kingsley  when  he  spoke  ;  for  he 
spoke  with  characteristic  power  and  eloquence,  moving  all 
by  his  earnestness  and  evident  sincerity.  '*  If  you  want  to 
be  stirred  to  the  very  depths  of  your  heart,"  said  one  of 


CHARLES  KINGSLEY.  367 

the  minor  canons  to  Canon  Farrar,  "  come  to  the  abbey 
and  hear  Canon  Kingsley."  And  when  he  preached,  as 
he  often  did,  to  classes  of  college  boys,  even  the  youngest, 
they  always  found  something  pertinent  to  their  own  cases 
in  what  he  said. 

He  had  married  in  the  early  days  of  Eversley  the  one 
woman  he  ever  loved,  and  the  marriage  was  one  of  pecu- 
liar happiness,  so  that  his  home  life  was  always  of  the 
brightest.  A  family  of  beautiful  children  sprung  up  around 
him,  and  in  his  peculiar  fondness  for  pets  he  always  had 
dogs  about  him  that  were  scarcely  less  dear  than  his 
children.  He  mourned  the  death  of  one  after  another 
of  his  favorites,  until,  when  the  last  one  died,  he  said  he 
would  have  no  more,  —  the  pang  of  parting  with  them  was 
too  keen. 

The  influence  of  his  books  as  they  came  along  one  after 
another  — "Yeast,"  "Alton  Locke,"  "  Hypatia,"  "West- 
ward Ho,"  "  Two  Years  Ago  "  —  was  of  a  stimulating,  even 
of  an  exciting,  nature,  particularly  that  of  the  earlier  ones. 
Like  nearly  all  men  of  genius,  when  young  he  was  a  rad- 
ical, and  upon  the  publication  of  his  first  books  the  con- 
servatives all  took  up  arms  against  him.  In  review  after 
review,  all  learning,  all  sincerity,  all  merit  was  denied  him. 
He  bore  up  under  a  storm  of  obloquy  and  misrepresenta- 
tion. This  simply  because  he  had  shown  some  of  the 
sufferings  of  the  poor,  —  given  some  vivid  pictures  of 
life  in  England  as  it  was  in  those  days,  before  the  repeal 
of  the  Corn  Laws  had  mitigated  a  little  the  sufferings  of  the 
dependent  masses ;  and  had  expressed  some  human  sym- 
pathy with  all  this  fruitless  pain,  and  a  manly  indignation 
at  some  forms  of  atrocious  wrong.  But  there  was  nothing 
in  his  teaching  of  the  people  which  should  have  given 
offence  to  the  veriest  conservative.  The  main  burden 
of  it  was  that  "  workingmen  must  emancipate  themselves 
from  the  tyranny  of  their  own  vices  before  they  could  be 
emancipated  from  the  tyranny  of  bad  social  arrangements  ; 
that  they  must  cultivate  the  higher  elements  of  a  com- 
mon humanity  in  themselves  before  they  could  obtain 


368 


HOME  LIFE  OF  ORE  A  T  A  UTHORS. 


their  share  in  the  heritage  of  national  civihzation.  He 
discouraged  every  approach  to  illegahty  or  violence,  and 
during  the  riots  of  that  exciting  time  worked  as  hard  as 
the  Duke  of  Wellington  to  keep  the  peace."  But  the 
Philistines  of  that  day  looked  upon  it  as  crime  in  a  ben- 
eficed clergyman  to  enter  into  friendly  intercourse  for 
any  purpose  whatever  with  revolutionists,  as  they  called 
the  agitators,  who  were  engaged  in  what  seem  to  us  now 
to  have  been  great  reforms.  They  denounced  him  for  a 
Chartist,  a  name  which  he  proudly  owned,  although  he 
never  went  the  lengths  of  the  real  leaders  in  that  move- 
ment ;  and  owning,  as  his  enemies  did,  all  the  powerful 
papers  and  reviews,  they  systematically  belittled  his  work 
and  prejudiced  the  minds  of  many  people  against  him  to 
his  dying  day. 

This  misinterpretation  of  his  work  and  misinterpreta- 
tion of  his  motives  was  a  keen  grief  to  him  throughout 
life.  He  never  became  hardened  to  such  attacks,  and 
they  afflicted  him  to  the  end.  " '  Hypatia,' "  he  once 
said,  "  was  written  with  my  heart's  blood,  and  was 
received,  as  I  expected,  with  curses  from  many  of  the 
very  churchmen  whom  I  was  trying  to  warn  and  save." 
But  he  was  more  than  repaid  for  this  misinterpretation 
and  persecution  by  the  orthodox  and  conservative  classes, 
by  seeing  the  efforts  he  had  put  forth  —  some  of  them,  at 
least  —  crowned  with  considerable  success  even  in  his  life- 
time ;  while  he  was  conscious  of  having  sown  much  seed 
that  would  ultimately  take  root  in  reform.  He  never 
faltered,  although  he  grew  very  weak  and  discouraged  at 
times.     He  \ATites  thus  to  a  friend  :  — 

"  Pray  for  me  ;  I  could  lie  down  and  die  sometimes.  A 
poor  fool  of  a  fellow,  and  yet  feeling  thrust  upon  all  sorts  of 
great  and  unspeakable  paths,  instead  of  being  left  in  peace 
to  classify  butterflies  and  catch  trout." 

Long  before  his  death  he  saw  the  condition  of  the 
English  poor  very  materially  modified.     Bad  as  things 


CHARLES  KINGSLEY, 


369 


are  in  England  to-day,  they  are  much  better  than  in  the 
days  when  Cliarles  Kingsley  began  his  labors. 

He  was  accused  of  growing  conservative  in  later  life, 
and  doubtless  he  did  so,  as  it  is  natural  that  man  should 
do ;  but  he  had  witnessed  great  improvement  during  his 
life,  and  perhaps  felt  that  the  forces  which  had  been 
called  into  play  needed  guiding  and  directing  now, 
rather  than  further  stimulation.  But,  like  all  dreamers, 
he  was  obhged  to  bid  farewell  to  many  of  his  dreams 
for  the  good  of  his  fellow-men  as  he  grew  older.  There 
was  intense  sadness  to  him  in  this,  and  Kingsley  during 
all  his  later  hfe  was  a  very  sad  man.  Striving  to  be  cheery 
and  helpful,  as  he  had  ever  been,  there  was  yet  in  his 
face  the  look  of  a  defeated  man,  —  the  look  of  a  man 
upon  whom  hfe  had  palled,  and  who  had  scarcely  hope 
enough  left  to  carry  him  through  to  the  end.  There  was 
remarkable  pathos  in  many  of  his  sermons,  and  ineffable 
sadness  in  many  of  his  letters.  Doubtless  much  of  this 
was  due  to  overwork,  for  he  had  overworked  himself  sys- 
tematically for  many  years,  and  could  not  escape  the  con- 
sequences. He  paid  the  penalty  in  flagging  spirits  and 
a  growing  weariness  of  life.  During  the  journey  in 
America,  near  the  close  of  his  Hfe,  there  was  but  a 
forced  interest  where  once  the  feeling  would  have  been 
real  and  keen;  and  we  find  him  once  writing  like 
this  :  — 

"  As  I  ride  I  jog  myself  and  say,  '  You  stupid  fellow,  wake 
up !  Do  you  see  that  ?  and  that  ?  Do  you  know  where  you 
are?'  And  my  other  self  answers,  'Don't  bother,  I  have  seen 
so  much  I  can't  take  in  any  more  ;  and  I  don't  care  about  it 
at  all.  I  longed  to  get  here,  I  have  been  more  than  satisfied 
with  being  here,  and  now  I  long  to  get  back  again.'" 

And,  again,  from  St.  Louis  he  writes  :  — 

"  I  wish  already  that  our  heads  were  turned  homeward, 
and  that  we  had  done  the  great  tour,  and  had  it  not  to  do." 

There  was  also  much  of  pathos  in  his  speech  at  the 
Lotos  Club  in  1874,  where  he  said  :  — 

24 


370  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

"  One  of  the  kind  wishes  expressed  for  me  is  long  life. 
Let  anything  be  asked  for  me  except  that.  Let  us  live  hard, 
work  hard,  go  at  a  good  pace,  get  to  our  journey's  end  as 
soon  as  possible  ;  then  let  the  post-horse  get  the  shoulder 
out  of  the  collar.  ...  I  have  lived  long  enough  to  feel  like 
the  old  post-horse, — very  thankful  as  the  end  draws  near. 
.  .  .  Long  life  is  the  last  thing  that  I  desire.  It  may  be  that 
as  one  grows  older  one  acquires  more  and  more  the  painful 
consciousness  of  the  difference  between  what  ought  to  be 
done  and  what  can  be  done,  and  sits  down  more  quietly 
when  one  gets  the  wrong  side  of  fifty  to  let  others  start  up 
to  do  for  us  things  we  cannot  do  ourselves.  But  it  is  the 
highest  pleasure  that  a  man  can  have  who  has  (to  his  own 
exceeding  comfort)  turned  down  the  hill  at  last,  to  beheve 
that  younger  spirits  will  rise  up  after  him  and  catch  the  lamp 
of  truth  —  as  in  the  old  lamp-bearing  race  of  Greece  —  out  of 
his  hand  before  it  expires,  and  carry  it  on  to  the  goal  with 
swifter  and  more  even  feet." 

He  did  not  live  long  after  his  return  from  America. 
He  took  cold  Advent  Sunday,  and  soon  was  down  with 
the  sickness  from  which  he  never  recovered.  His  wife 
was  dangerously  ill  at  the  same  time,  and  he  made  him- 
self seriously  worse  by  leaving  his  bed  once  or  twice  to 
go  to  her,  where  he  said  "heaven  was."  To  this  wife 
he  had  been  a  devoted  lover  for  over  thirty  years,  and 
retained  to  the  last  moment  his  chivalric  devotion.  To 
his  children  and  his  servants  he  w^as  the  ideal  parent  and 
master,  and  to  every  one  who  had  known  him  personally 
the  ideal  friend.  His  parish  was  only  a  large  family, 
where  he  was  held  in  like  honor  and  esteem.  Would 
that  we  all  in  these  restless  times  might  find  some  of  the 
secret  springs  of  his  life,  and  thus  make,  like  him, 

"  Life,  death,  and  that  vast  forever 
One  grand,  sweet  song  "  ! 

His  wife  remained  for  a  httle  time  to  mourn  his  loss, 
although  he  believed  at  the  time  of  his  death  that  she 
would' not  live,  and  spoke  of  the  supreme  blessing  of  not 
being  divided  in  the  hour  of  death  from  her  he  had  loved 


CHARLES  KINGSLEY. 


371 


SO  well.  She  lived  to  tell  to  the  world,  in  a  touching  and 
tender  manner,  the  story  of  that  life  of  "  deep  and  strange 
sorrows,"  as  he  once  expressed  it ;  and  then  followed  him, 
gladly,  into  the  rest  that  remains  for  all  who  toil  earnestly 
and  worthily  as  he  had  done.  It  was  proposed  to  bury 
him  in  Westminster  Abbey,  but  agreeably  to  his  own 
wishes  in  the  matter  he  was  buried  in  the  little  church- 
yard at  Eversley,  where  he  had  familiar  acquaintance  with 
every  tree  and  shrub,  and  where  the  poor,  to  whom  he 
had  been  so  much  while  Hving,  could  still  feel  him  near 
to  them  though  dead.  Upon  the  white  marble  cross  are 
carved  the  words,  "God  is  Love,"  —  the  words  which 
had  been  the  central  thought  of  all  his  eloquent  and  effec- 
tive preaching,  and  the  words  by  which  he  had  shaped 
his  whole  life ;  for,  in  imitation  of  that  God  he  so  rever- 
enced, he  had  made  his  life  one  of  active  love  and  help- 
fulness toward  the  whole  brotherhood  of  man.  Few  men 
of  loftier  aims,  higher  purposes,  purer  spirit,  have  ever 
lived ;  few  men  who  fulfilled  the  priestly  office  in  so  high 
and  conscientious  a  manner  have  been  known  in  our  day ; 
few  reformers  who  have  been  so  aggressive,  and  yet  so 
temperate  in  action ;  few  men  personally  so  loved  by 
those  who  knew  him  intimately.  Soft  be  the  turf  at  Ever- 
sley upon  him,  and  sweet  the  sighing  of  her  summer 
winds  about  his  grave  1 


JOHN    RUSKIN. 

IN  the  very  heart  of  the  great  city  of  London,  shut  in 
by  dingy  brick  walls  that  closed  upon  him  to  such 
an  extent  that  it  was  only  by  going  into  the  middle  of 
the  street  and  looking  up  that  he  could  ever  see  the  sky, 
in  the  early  part  of  the  century,  was  born  the  man  who  has 
the  finest  eye  for  the  beauties  of  the  natural  world,  and 
the  most  eloquent  pen  in  describing  them,  that  the  century 
has  produced. 

We  will  make  no  exception  of  poet  or  painter  in  this 
statement ;  for  John  Ruskin  sees  more  and  better  than 
any  poet  of  the  day,  and  can  give  in  words  a  more  vivid 
picture  of  a  scene  he  loves  than  any  painter  can  produce. 
Indeed,  few  men  have  lived  at  any  time  who  could  color 
a  landscape  as  Ruskin  colors  it,  or  who  have  so  delicate 
an  eye  for  the  shyest  and  most  sequestered  beauties,  as 
has  this  poet-painter.  Probably  Wordsworth  comes  nearer 
to  Ruskin  than  any  other  modern  \vriter  in  his  love  of 
the  natural  world,  and  he  has  given  us  the  finest  descrip- 
tions we  have  of  some  phases  of  Nature ;  but  there  is  a 
glow  and  a  depth  of  feeling  about  Ruskin's  descriptions 
which  even  Wordsworth  lacks.  A  real  worship  of  Nature 
runs  through  all  that  he  has  written.  Think  of  a  child 
with  such  a  nature  as  this  brought  up  in  a  crowded  city, 
— a  city  unhke  many  others,  especially  in  this  country 
and  on  the  Continent,  where  lovely  glimpses  of  Nature 
may  be  had  from  open  squares,  or  streets  leading  out 


JOHN  RUSKIN.  373 

into  lovely  country  roads.  In  New  York  one  can  hardly 
walk  anywhere  without  catching  glimpses  of  the  water 
and  the  shores  of  New  Jersey  or  Long  Island.  Most 
boys,  we  fancy,  penetrate  to  the  Battery  and  enjoy  its 
superb  outlook;  or  they  have  the  run  of  Central  Park, 
where  they  make  a  sort  of  acquaintance  with  Nature,  which, 
if  somewhat  artificial,  is  much  better  than  no  knowledge 
at  all.  In  Edinburgh  the  inhabitants  live  under  the  shadow 
of  its  two  fantastic  mountains,  and  from  their  windows  can 
trace  the  windings  of  its  glittering  frith.  Not  even  the 
lofty  houses  of  the  Canongate  or  the  battlements  of  the 
castle  afford  the  eye  an  equal  pleasure.  In  Venice  not 
even  the  Palace  of  the  Doge,  the  most  beautiful  building 
in  the  world,  or  the  matchless  walls  of  fair  St.  Mark's,  can 
keep  the  eye  from  seeking  the  blue  waters  of  the  Adriatic 
or  the  purple  outlines  of  the  Alps.  Beautiful  Verona  has 
a  broad  and  rushing  river  of  deep  blue  sweeping  through 
the  heart  of  it ;  it  has  an  environment  of  cliffs,  where  grow 
the  cypress  and  the  olive,  and  a  far-away  view  of  the  St. 
Gothard  Alps.  Rome,  from  its  amphitheatre  of  hills,  has 
views  of  unrivalled  loveliness,  and  its  broad  Campagna  is 
a  picture  in  itself.  Paris  even  has  its  charms  of  external 
nature,  as  have  all  the  cities  of  the  New  World ;  but  London 
is  grim  and  gray,  and  bare  and  desolate,  wrapped  in  eter- 
nal fog.  To  be  sure,  it  has  the  Thames,  and  there  are 
lovely  suburbs ;  but  we  mean  that  vast,  densely  crowded 
part  of  the  city  proper  which  we  think  of  when  we  say 
London. 

The  father  of  John  Ruskin  was  a  London  wine-mer- 
chant, who  made  and  bequeathed  to  him  a  large  fortune. 
But  they  were  very  plain  people,  and  the  youth  knew 
nothing  of  ostentation  or  luxury.  He  says  of  his  child- 
hood :  — 

*'  Nor  did  I  painfully  wish  what  I  was  never  permitted  for 
an  instant  to  hope,  or  even  imagine,  the  possession  of  such 
things  as  one  saw  in  toy-shops.  I  had  a  bunch  of  keys  to 
play  with  as  long  as  I  was  capable  only  of  pleasure  in  what 
glittered  and  jingled ;  as  I  grew  older  I  had  a  cart  and  a  ball, 


374  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

and  when  I  was  five  or  six  years  old,  two  boxes  of  well-cut 
wooden  bricks.  With  these  modest,  but,  I  still  think,  entirely 
sufficient  possessions,  and  being  always  summarily  whipped  if 
I  cried,  did  not  do  as  I  was  bid,  or  tumbled  on  the  stairs,  I 
soon  attained  serene  and  secure  methods  of  life  and  motion ; 
and  could  pass  my  days  contentedly  in  tracing  the  square  and 
comparing  the  colors  of  my  carpet,  examining  the  knots  in 
the  wood  of  the  floors,  or  counting  the  bricks  in  the  opposite 
houses,  with  rapturous  intervals  of  excitement  during  the 
filling  of  the  water-cart  through  its  leathern  pipe  from  the 
dripping  iron  post  at  the  pavement  edge,  or  the  still  more 
admirable  proceedings  of  the  turncock,  when  he  turned  and 
turned  till  a  fountain  sprang  up  in  the  middle  of  the  street. 
But  the  carpet,  and  what  patterns  I  could  find  in  bed-covers, 
dresses,  or  wall-papers  to  be  examined,  were  my  chief  re- 
sources ;  and  my  attention  to  the  particulars  in  these  was 
soon  so  accurate  that  when  at  three  and  a  half  I  was  taken 
to  have  my  portrait  painted  by  Mr,  Northcote,  I  had  not  been 
ten  minutes  alone  with  him  before  I  asked  him  why  there 
were  holes  in  his  carpet." 

He  was  once  taken  when  a  child  to  the  brow  of  the 
crags  overlooking  Derwentwater,  and  he  tells  of  the  "intense 
joy,  mingled  with  awe,  that  I  had  in  looking  through  the 
hollows  in  the  mossy  roots  over  the  crag  into  the  dark  lake, 
and  which  has  associated  itself  more  or  less  with  all  twin- 
ing roots  of  trees  ever  since."  He  also  speaks  of  his  joy 
in  first  treading  on  the  grass ;  and,  indeed,  each  fresh  bit 
of  acquaintance  which  he  made  with  Nature  gave  him  un- 
bounded delight.    He  says  in  his  late  "  Recollections  : "  — 

"  To  my  further  great  benefit,  as  I  grew  older  I  saw  nearly 
all  the  noblemen's  houses  in  England,  in  reverent  and  healthy 
delight  of  uncovetous  admiration, — perceiving,  as  soon  as  I 
could  perceive  any  pohtical  truth  at  all,  that  it  was  probably 
much  happier  to  live  in  a  small  house  and  have  Warwick 
Castle  to  be  astonished  at,  than  to  live  in  Warwick  Casde 
and  have  nothing  to  be  astonished  at;  but  that,  at  all  events, 
it  would  not  make  Brunswick  Square  in  the  least  more  pleas- 
antly habitable  to  pull  Warwick  Castle  down.  And  at  this 
day,  though  I  have  kind  invitations  enough  to  visit  America, 


JOHN  RUSK  IN.  375 

I  could  not,  even  for  a  couple  of  months,  live  in  a  country  so 
miserable  as  to  possess  no  castles." 

Again  he  says  :  — 

"  For  the  best  and  truest  beginning  of  all  blessings,  I  had 
been  taught  the  perfect  meaning  of  Peace,  in  thought,  act, 
and  word!  Angry  words,  hurry,  and  disorder  I  never  knew 
in  the  stillness^ot  my  childhood's  home.  Next  to  this  quite 
priceless  gift  of  Peace,  I  had  received  the  perfect  under- 
standing of  the  natures  of  Obedience  and  Faith.  I  obeyed 
word  or  lifted  finger  of  father  or  mother,  simply  as  a  ship 
her  helm:  not  only  without  idea  of  resistance,  but  receiving 
the  direction  as  a  part  of  my  own  life  and  force,  — a  helpful 
law,  as  necessary  to  me  in  every  moral  action  as  the  law  of 
gravity  in  leaping.  And  my  practice  in  Faith  was  soon  com- 
plete; nothing  was  ever  promised  me  that  was  not  given, 
nothing  ever  threatened  me  that  was  not  inflicted,  and  noth- 
ing ever  told  me  that  was  not  true." 

Ruskin's  father  began  to  read  Byron  to  him  soon  after 
he  entered  his  teens,  the  first  passage  being  the  shipwreck 
in  "Don  Juan." 

<'  I  recollect  that  he  and  my  mother  looked  across  the  table 
at  each  other  with  something  of  alarm,  when  on  asking  me 
a  i^v^festas  afterwards  what  we  should  have  for  after-dinner 
reading,  I  instantlv  answered,  'Juan  and  Haidee.'  My  se- 
lection was  not  adopted,  and  feeling  there  was  somethmg 
wrong  somewhere,  I  did  not  press  it,  attempting  even  some 
stutter  of  apology,  which  made  matters  worse.  Perhaps  I 
was  c-iven  a  bit  of '  Childe  Harold'  instead,  which  I  liked  at 
that  time  nearly  as  well ;  and,  indeed,  the  story  of  Haidee 
soon  became  too  sad  for  me.  But  very  certainly  by  the  end 
of  this  year,  1834,  I  knew  my  Byron  pretty  well  all  through. 
I  never  got  the  slightest  harm  from  Byron  ;  what  harm 
came  to  me  was  from  the  facts  of  life  and  from  books  of  a 
baser  kind,  including  a  wide  range  of  the  works  of  authors 
popularly  considered  extremely  instructive, —from  Victor 
Hugo  down  to  Dr.  Watts." 

Byron  became  a  great  favorite  with  the  young  student, 
as  will  be  seen  from  the  following  passage  :—• 


376  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

"  I  rejoiced  in  all  the  sarcasm  of  '  Don  Juan.'  But  my 
firm  decision,  as  soon  as  I  got  well  into  the  later  cantos  of  it, 
that  Byron  was  to  be  my  master  in  verse,  as  Turner  in  color, 
was  made,  of  course,  in  that  gosling,  or  say  cygnet,  epoch  of 
existence,  without  consciousness  of  the  deeper  instincts  that 
prompted  it.  Only  two  things  I  consciously  recognized,  — 
that  his  truth  of  observation  was  the  most  exact  and  his 
chosen  expression  the  most  concentrated  that  I  had  yet 
found  in  literature.  By  that  time  my  father  had  himself  put 
me  through  the  first  two  books  of  Livy,  and  I  knew,  there- 
fore, what  close-set  language  was  ;  but  I  saw  then  that  Livy, 
as  afterward  that  Horace  and  Tacitus,  were  studiously,  often 
laboriously,  and  sometimes  obscurely  concentrated  ;  while 
Byron  wrote,  as  easily  as  a  hawk  flies  and  as  clearly  as  a 
lake  reflects,  the  exact  truth  in  the  precisely  narrowest  terms, 
—  not  only  the  exact  truth,  but  the  most  central  and  useful 
one.  Of  course  I  could  no  more  measure  Byron's  greater 
powers  at  that  time  than  I  could  Turner's ;  but  I  saw  that 
both  were  right,  in  all  things  that  I  knew  right  from  wrong 
in,  and  that  they  must  henceforth  be  my  masters,  each  in  his 
own  domain.  But  neither  the  force  and  precision  nor  the 
rhythm  of  Byron's  language  was  at  all  the  central  reason 
for  my  taking  him  for  master.  Knowing  the  Song  of  Moses 
and  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  by  heart,  and  half  the  Apoca- 
lypse besides,  I  was  in  no  need  of  tutorship  either  in  the 
majesty  or  simplicity  of  English  words  ;  and  for  their  logical 
arrangement  I  had  had  Byron's  own  master,  Pope,  since  I 
could  lisp.  But  the  thing  wholly  new  and  precious  to  me 
in  Byron  was  his  measured  and  living  truth, — measured  as 
compared  with  Homer,  and  living  as  compared  with  every- 
body else." 

He  began  to  be  an  observer  of  beauty  at  a  very  early 
age,  and  then,  as  afterwards,  placed  beauty  first,  utility 
second.     He  says  :  — 

"  So  that  very  early,  indeed,  in  my  thoughts  of  trees  I  had 
got  at  the  principle,  given  fifty  years  afterwards  in  Proser- 
pina, that  the  seeds  and  fruits  of  them  were  for  the  sake  of 
the  flowers,  not  the  flowers  for  the  fruit.  The  first  joy  of  the 
year  being  in  its  snowdrops,  the  second  and  cardinal  one 
was  in  the  almond-blossom,  every  other  garden  and  wood- 


JOHN  R  US  KIN.  377 

land  gladness  following  from  that  in  an  unbroken  order  of 
kindling  flower  and  shadowy  leaf;  and  for  many  and  many  a 
year  to  come  —  until,  indeed,  the  whole  of  life  became  autumn 
to  me  —  my  chief  prayer  for  the  kindness  of  Heaven,  in  its 
flowerful  seasons,  was  that  the  frost  might  not  touch  the 
almond-blossom." 

His  mother,  who  was  a  very  religious  woman,  used  to 
obhge  him  to  learn  long  chapters  of  the  Bible  by  heart 
at  a  very  early  age,  and  his  favorite  chapters  were  always 
from  the  Psalms,  where  there  is  so  much  of  grand  and 
glowing  poetry.  It  was  a  fine  diet  for  such  a  child  as  he, 
or,  indeed,  for  any  child ;  and  he  attributes  his  taste  for 
the  grand  things  in  hterature  to  his  early  knowledge  of  the 
matchless  poetry  of  the  Bible.  Doubtless  it  gave  also  that 
devotional  bent  to  his  mind  which  has  been  one  of  his 
many  striking  characteristics  through  life.  He  is  as  essen- 
tially religious  as  one  of  the  old  Hebrew  prophets,  and  has 
brought  forward  his  religious  precepts  in  season  and  out 
of  season  ever  since  he  began  to  write. 

He  was  taken  on  his  travels  when  but  a  boy,  and  saw 
many  of  the  beauties  of  Europe  before  he  went  to  Oxford. 
He  made  acquaintance  at  that  early  age  with  most  of  the 
beautiful  buildings  about  which  he  has  since  written  so 
eloquently.  The  old  Gothic  buildings  pleased  him  most 
of  all,  —  even  the  rugged  Gothic  of  the  North.  He  spent 
much  time  in  Italy  and  in  Switzerland,  which  he  says  is 
a  country  to  be  visited  and  not  hved  in.  He  thinks  that 
such  sublimity  of  scenery  should  only  be  looked  upon  rever- 
ently, and  that  those  who  view  it  habitually  lose  their  rever- 
ence, and,  indeed,  do  not  appreciate  it  at  any  time. 

At  Oxford  he  produced  a  prize  poem ;  but  he  has 
never  been  heard  of  as  a  poet  since,  although  there  is 
more  of  poetry  in  his  prose  than  in  the  verse  of  many  of 
his  contemporary  poetical  brethren,  and  if  any  man  of  his 
time  has  been  endowed  with  the  true  poetic  temperament, 
it  is  surely  he. 

His  constitution  has  always  been  feeble,  and  he 
can  bear  no  excitement,  and  has  been  known  to  sink 


378 


HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 


into  such  exhaustion  from  a  little  over-tension  of  the 
nerves  that  it  has  been  very  difficult  to  bring  him  back  to 
consciousness. 

A  person  of  this  nature  was  probably  very  romantic  in 
his  youth,  and  he  fell  very  violently  in  love  with  a  Scottish 
lady  when  quite  young.  He  says  that  never  having  been 
indulged  with  much  affection  in  youth,  or  been  allowed  to 
bestow  a  great  deal  even  upon  his  parents,  when  in  later 
life  love  did  come,  "  it  came  with  violence,  utterly  ram- 
pant and  unmanageable,  at  least  to  me,  who  never  before 
had  anything  to  manage." 

He  lived  in  a  world  of  his  own  dreams  for  a  long  time, 
endowing  the  object  of  his  affections  with  every  grace  and 
charm.  He  was  an  exacting  as  well  as  a  passionate  lover, 
and  the  lady  was  of  far  cooler  blood  than  he.  But  after  a 
variety  of  experiences,  such  as  fall  to  the  lot  of  most  lovers, 
the  lady  became  his  wife.  Of  course  the  world  knows 
little  of  the  inner  secrets  of  that  married  life,  for  John 
Ruskin  is  not  a  man  to  cry  his  sorrows  in  the  market- 
place ;  but  the  world  does  know  that  the  marriage  proved 
very  unhappy,  and  that  it  was  finally  followed  by  a  separa- 
tion. Of  course  there  was  a  world  of  scandal  at  the  time, 
which  is  now  happily  forgotten ;  for  all  this  was  very,  very 
long  ago,  and  the  first  scandal  was  as  nothing  compared 
to  that  which  followed  the  lady's  marriage  with  Millais,  the 
artist  of  whom  London  is  so  proud.  There  was  no  moral 
blame  imputed  to  either  party  at  the  time  of  the  separa- 
tion ;  and  it  w^as  understood  to  have  been  only  one  of  the 
numerous  cases  of  incompatibility,  of  which  the  world  is 
so  full. 

This  most  deplorable  event  in  Ruskin's  life  was  followed 
by  long  years  of  seclusion.  He  had  never  gone  much 
into  society,  but  after  this  he  lived  in  almost  utter  solitude 
for  years,  writing  his  wonderful  books,  and  making  long 
stays  in  Venice  and  other  distant  cities.  He  was  born  to 
wealth,  and  never  had  to  trouble  himself  about  the  more 
prosaic  affairs  of  the  world.  In  this  country  we  have  had 
until  recently  no  large  leisure  class,  and  those  who  are 


JOHN  RUSKIN.  379 

now  taking  that  place  are  few  in  number,  and  seem  utterly 
at  a  loss  how  to  pass  their  time  amid  the  business  and  l^ustle 
of  our  hurrying  life.     More  and  more  are  they  going  to 
Europe,  as  is  natural ;  for  there  they  find  people  like  them- 
selves, and  multitudes  of  them,  who  have  nothing  to  do, 
and  who  therefore  seek  to  enjoy  their  leisure.     With  such 
a  man  as  Ruskin  this  was  not  difficult,  and  he  became  a 
hard  worker,  not  from  necessity,  but   from  the  pressure 
from  within.     He   never  made  or  sought   to  make  any 
money  from  his  books,  but  they  gave  him  great  delight 
in  the  writing,  and  brought  him  fame,  which  he  did  not 
disdain.     One  of  the  cardinal  principles  of  his  morality 
has  always  been  that  poverty  is  no  bar  to  happiness,  but 
that  all  that  is  best  in  life  is  open  to  poor  as  well  as  rich. 
This   he  proclaimed   loudly   in  lectures  to  workingmen, 
which  he  inaugurated  in  London,  Edinburgh,  and  other 
cities.     If  men  can  only  be  taught  to  see,  and  to  think, 
and  to  worship,  according  to  Ruskin   they  have  always 
sources  of  happiness  at  hand,  of  which  no  outward  force 
of  circumstances  can  deprive  them.     This  is  a  great  and  a 
true  gospel,  and  would  there  were  more  such  eloquent  pro- 
claimers  of  it  as  Ruskin  !     What  could  be  better  doctrine 
for  the  men  and  women  of  this  generation  than  this  :  — 

''  In  order  to  teach  men  how  to  be  satisfied,  it  is  necessary 
fully  to  understand  the  art  and  joy  of  humble  fife ;  this  at 
present,  of  all  arts  and  sciences,  being  the  one  most  needing 
study.  Humble  life,  —  that  is  to  say,  proposing  to  itself  no 
future  exaltation,  but  only  a  sweet  continuance ;  not  excluding 
the  idea  of  forethought,  but  only  of  fore-sorrow,  and  taking 
no  troublous  thought  for  coming  days.  The  life  of  domestic 
affection  and  domestic  peace,  full  of  sensitiveness  to  all  ele- 
ments of  costless  and  kind  pleasure,  therefore  chiefly  to  the 
loveliness  of  the  natural  world." 

Again  he  sums  up  these  costless  pleasures  in  sentences 
weighty  with  meaning  :  — 

*'  To  watch  the  corn  grow,  and  the  blossoms  set ;  to  draw 
hard  breath  over  plough,  hoe,  and  spade ;  to  read,  to  think, 


380  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

to  love,  to  hope,  to  pray,  —  these  are  the  things  which  make 
men  happy;  they  have  always  had  the  power  to  do  this,  and 
they  always  will.  The  world's  prosperity  or  adversity  depends 
upon  our  knowing  and  teaching  these  few  things,  but  upon 
iron  or  glass,  or  electricity  or  steam,  in  nowise." 

Ruskin  has  always  had  a  quarrel  with  the  railroads,  and 
says  that  all  travelling  becomes  dull  in  proportion  to  its 
rapidity.  "Going  by  raikoad,"  he  affirms,  "  I  do  not  call 
travelling  at  all ;  but  it  is  merely  '  being  sent '  to  a  place, 
and  very  httle  different  from  becoming  a  parcel.  A  man 
who  really  loves  travelling  would  as  soon  consent  to  pack 
a  day  of  such  happiness  into  an  hour  of  railroad  as  one 
who  loved  eating  would  agree,  if  it  were  possible,  to  con- 
centrate his  dinner  into  a  pill."  Walking  he  commends 
most  heartily  to  young  men,  and  considers  it  one  of  the 
rarest  pleasures  of  life.  In  this  country  walking-parties  are 
as  yet  almost  unknown,  but  in  Europe  they  are  extremely 
common,  especially  among  students.  What  could  be  bet- 
ter for  the  youth  of  our  land  than  such  a  pastime  as  this 
for  their  vacations  ? 

He  has  also  a  great  contempt  for  some  of  the  feats  of 
modern  science,  and  exclaims  somewhere  :  — 

"  The  scientific  men  are  as  busy  as  ants  examining  the  sun 
and  the  moon  and  the  seven  stars  ;  and  can  tell  me  all  about 
them,  I  beUeve,  by  this  time,  and  how  they  move,  and  what 
they  are  made  of.  And  I  do  not  care,  for  my  part,  two  cop- 
per spangles  how  they  move  or  of  what  they  are  made.  I 
can't  move  them  any  other  way  than  they  go,  nor  make  them 
of  anything  else  better  than  they  are  made." 

It  is  over  forty  years  ago  that  Ruskin  startled  the 
literary  and  artistic  world  with  that  marvellous  book 
entitled  "  Modern  Painters  ;  Their  Superiority  in  the  Art 
of  Landscape  Painting  to  All  the  Ancient  Masters."  The 
title  contained  the  argument  of  the  book,  and  it  was  a 
monumental  heresy  to  utter  at  that  time.  Not  that  there 
was  the  least  doubt  as  to  its  truth,  but  no  voice  had 
then  been  raised  to  proclaim  it.     The  English  people  at 


JOHN  RUSKIN.  381 

that  time  were  blind  worshippers  of  Claude  and  one  or 
t^vo  other  old  masters ;  and  here  was  a  daring  youth  — 
reminding  one  of  David  with  his  sling  —  going  forth  to 
do  battle  against  all  the  received  art  opinions  of  his 
day,  and  boldly  proclaiming  Turner  a  better  painter  than 
Claude,  Salvator  Rosa,  Caspar  Poussin,  and  the  various 
Van-Somethings  who  had  until  that  time  held  undisputed 
sway  in  conventional  art  circles.  The  young  Oxford 
graduate  was  greeted  with  a  perfect  tempest  of  ridicule 
and  denunciation.  Every  critic  in  the  land  hurled  his 
lance  at  him,  and  every  artist  looked  upon  him  with 
sovereign  contempt.  The  young  Oxford  man,  however, 
valiantly  held  his  ground.  He  possessed  genius,  pro- 
found conviction,  and  a  magnificent  self-conceit ;  and  he 
hurled  back  defiance  to  the  whole  art-clan,  and  rode  for- 
ward. Criticism  beat  upon  the  book  in  vain.  Everybody 
read  it,  and  everybody  talked  about  it,  and  it  conquered 
criticism  at  last.  No  such  sensation  in  the  art  line  has 
been  made  in  Ruskin's  day.  His  teachings  in  the  course 
of  a  few  years  well-nigh  revolutionized  art  opinion  in  Eng- 
land. The  sum  and  substance  of  it  was  Nature  against 
conventionality.  People  must  look  at  Nature  with  their 
own  eyes  and  judge  art  by  the  help  of  Nature.  This 
seems  simple  enough  to-day,  but  it  was  a  new  doctrine  in 
Ruskin's  youth. 

Ruskin  has  always  been  an  extremest  in  everything, 
and  he  went  so  far  as  to  denounce  Raphael's  "  Charge  to 
Peter  "  on  the  grounds  that  the  Apostles  are  not  dressed 
as  men  of  that  time  and  place  would  have  been  when 
going  out  fishing.  He  held  to  an  almost  brutal  realism  in 
everything,  and  preached  his  doctrine  whether  men  would 
hear  or  whether  they  would  forbear.  He  soon  rallied  a 
little  coterie  of  artists  about  him,  and  formed  a  school 
styled  the  Pre-Raphaelites.  The  principal  founder  of  the 
school  was  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti,  since  better  known  as 
a  poet  than  an  artist.  He  held  his  little  court  in  London 
for  many  years,  and  a  great  number  of  young  men  sat  at 
his  feet.    His  chief  supporters  at  first  were  Holman  Hunt 


382  HOME  LIFE   OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

and  Millais.  These  latter  soon  left  Rossetti  far  behind  in 
execution ;  but  Rossetti  was  the  soul  of  the  movement. 
He  had  received  his  inspiration  directly  from  Ruskin. 
Among  the  reminiscences  of  this  art  movement  are  Oscar 
Wilde  and  the  esthetes  of  London  to-day,  with  their 
"symphonies"  in  blue  and  their  "arrangements"  in 
yellow,  and  the  hideous  females  who  go  about  London 
drawing-rooms  in  limp  dresses  of  sulphur  color  and  sage 
green  loosely  hanging  from  their  shoulders,  after  the 
manner  of  ancient  Greece.  But  they  have  had  real  art- 
ists among  them,  —  these  apostles  of  the  sunflower  and 
knights  of  the  lily,  —  and  although  some  of  the  better 
class  have  repudiated  the  antics  of  their  followers,  the 
movement  known  as  Pre-Raphaelitism  has  really  been  an 
artistic  success. 

Ruskin  followed  the  "  Modern  Painters  "  in  due  time 
with  his  "  Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture  "  and  his  "  Stones 
of  Venice."  They  were  masterpieces  of  eloquent  descrip- 
tion and  rhetoric.  No  such  vivid  writing  had  been  seen 
for  many  a  day,  and  no  such  zeal  and  earnestness.  The 
wealth  of  gorgeous  imagery  was  dazzling ;  the  declamation 
imparted  to  it  the  eloquence  of  an  earlier  day,  and  the 
lofty  thought  and  moral  purpose  were  peculiarly  the 
author's  own.  The  books  exerted  a  remarkable  influence. 
He  has  written  much  since,  but  he  has  never  reached  the 
height  he  attained  in  those  earher  books. 

As  he  grew  older,  he  grew  dogmatic  and  crotchety  in 
the  extreme.  He  imitated  Carlyle  in  his  scoldings,  and 
indeed  was  much  influenced  by  Carlyle  in  many  ways. 
He  has  always  been  an  impracticable  theorist,  and  in 
these  latter  years  he  has  put  forth  a  thousand  foolish  and 
subversive  vagaries.  People  have  not  taken  him  quite 
seriously  for  some  time.  They  laugh  at  his  follies,  ridicule 
his  philanthropic  schemes,  —  of  which  he  has  an  infinite 
number,  for  he  is  a  man  of  the  kindest  heart,  —  they  tell 
excruciating  stories  of  his  colossal  self-conceit,  and  they 
go  home  and  read  his  books  because  no  such  books  can 
be  found  written  by  any  other  man,  search  they  never  so 


JOHN  RUSKIN.  383 

widely.  He  has  always  been  a  wrong-headed  man,  entirely 
out  of  accord  with  the  world  around  him,  and  consequently 
almost  sure  to  be  on  the  wrong  side  of  every  practical 
political  question.  He  and  Carlyle  had  much  in  common 
in  all  this,  and  it  would  have  been  a  rich  treat  to  have 
heard  Ruskin  proclaiming  his  political  creed,  "  I  am  a 
King's  man,  and  no  mob's  man ; "  and  to  have  heard 
Carlyle  answer  with  denunciations  of  his  millions  of  fellow- 
countrymen,  "  mostly  fools." 

Ruskin  lives  in  one  of  the  most  beautiful  of  London 
suburbs,  —  on  Denmark  Hill,  at  the  south  side  of  the 
river,  near  Dulvvich  and  the  exquisite  Sydenham  slopes, 
where  the  Crystal  Palace  stands.  His  home  is  beautiful, 
filled  with  wonderful  art  treasures  and  numberless  books, 
with  many  rare  and  costly  editions.  He  has  lectured 
much  at  Oxford ;  and  of  late  years  his  lectures  have  been 
so  crowded  that  tickets  had  to  be  procured  to  attend 
them.  This,  when  the  lectures  of  the  most  learned  pro- 
fessors of  the  university  are  often  given  to  a  beggarly  array 
of  empty  boxes. 

He  has  given  away  during  his  lifetime  the  greater  part 
of  his  large  fortune,  —  not  always  wisely,  but  always  in  a 
manner  characteristic  of  the  man.  He  has  acted  upon 
the  belief  that  it  is  wrong  to  take  interest  in  excess 
of  the  principal,  and  has  made  the  property  over  to  his 
debtors  whenever  he  has  had  interest  to  this  extent.  He 
gave  seventeen  thousand  pounds  to  his  poor  relations  as 
soon  as  he  came  into  his  fortune ;  and  fifteen  thousand 
pounds  more  to  a  cousin,  tossing  it  to  him  as  one  would  a 
sugar-plum ;  fourteen  thousand  pounds  to  Sheffield  and 
Oxford ;  and  numberless  other  gifts  to  different  charities, 
mostly  of  an  eccentric  nature.  He  retained  for  himself  three 
hundred  and  sixty  pounds  a  year,  upon  which  he  says  "  a 
bachelor  gentleman  ought  to  live,  or  if  he  cannot,  deserves 
speedily  to  die."  Of  course  such  a  royal  giver  has  been 
besieged  during  his  whole  life  by  an  innumerable  company 
of  beggars  for  every  conceivable  object ;  but  he  has  always 
chosen  to  select  for  himself  his  beneficiaries,  and  has  often 


384  HOME  LIFE  OF  GREAT  AUTHORS. 

sent  sharp  answers  to  appeals ;  like  the  following  to  the 
secretary  of  a  Protestant  Blind  Pension  Society  :  "  To  my 
mind,  the  prefix  of  '  Protestant '  to  your  society's  name 
indicates  far  stonier  blmdness  than  any  it  will  relieve." 
And  in  reply  to  a  letter  asking  aid  in  paying  off  a  church 
debt  he  replies  :  — 

"  I  am  sorrowfully  amused  at  your  appeal  to  me,  of  all 
people  in  the  world  the  precisely  least  likely  to  give  you  a 
farthing.  My  first  word  to  all  men  and  boys  who  care  to 
hear  me  is,  '  Don't  get  into  debt.  Starve,  and  go  to  heaven  ; 
but  don't  borrow.  Try,  first,  begging.  I  don't  mind,  if  it 's 
really  needful,  steahng.  But  don't  buy  things  you  can't  pay 
for.'  And  of  all  manner  of  debtors,  pious  people  building 
churches  they  can't  pay  for  are  the  most  detestable  nonsense 
to  me.  Can't  you  preach  and  pray  behind  the  hedges,  or 
in  a  sandpit,  or  in  a  coal-hole,  first  ?  And  of  all  manner  of 
churches  thus  idiotically  built,  iron  churches  are  the  damna- 
blest  to  me.  And  of  all  the  sects  and  believers  in  any  rul- 
ing spirit — Hindoos,  Turks,  Feather  Idolaters,  and  Mumbo 
Jumbo  Log  and  Fire  Worshippers  —  who  want  churches, 
your  modern  English  Evangelical  sect  is  the  most  absurd 
and  objectionable  and  unendurable  to  me.  All  of  which  you 
might  very  easily  have  found  out  from  my  books.  Any  other 
sort  of  sect  would,  before  bothering  me  to  write  it  to  them." 

Ruskin  is  the  poet  and  the  high-priest  of  Nature.  To 
him  she  reveals  her  mysteries,  and  he  interprets  them  to  a 
dull  and  commonplace  world  in  language  as  glowing  and 
impassioned  as  that  of  the  prophets  and  priests  of  the 
olden  time.  No  man,  apparently,  has  seen  the  sea  as  Rus- 
kin has  seen  it,  —  not  even  Byron,  who  wrote  so  majestic  a 
hymn  to  it ;  no  man  has  so  seen  the  mountains,  with  his 
very  soul  transfixed  in  solemn  awe ;  no  one  has  felt  as  he 
the  holy  stillness  of  the  forest  aisles,  or  so  described  even 
the  tiny  wild  flowers  of  the  fields.  And  he  has  not  only 
seen  their  outward  glories,  but  he  has  interpreted  their  hid- 
den meanings.  He  has  carried  the  symboHsm  of  Nature 
on  into  the  moral  world.  There  is  no  greater  morahst  than 
he.     He  is  stern  in  his  demands  for  right,  and  truth,  and 


JOHN  RUSK  IN.  385 

sincerity  in  life  and  in  work.  This  has  been  the  keynote 
of  his  teachings  throughout  life.  He  hates  a  falsehood  or 
a  sham  as  much  as  Browning  or  Carlyle.  He  has  taught 
his  countrymen  many  things.  No  people  love  Nature 
better  than  the  English  of  the  present  day,  and  John 
Ruskin  has  opened  the  eyes  of  many  of  them  to  the  beau- 
ties that  He  everywhere  about  them.  Then  his  long 
agitation  for  a  better  architecture  has  not  been  wholly  in 
vain.  Though  the  architects  all  laughed  at  him  when  his 
lectures  were  given,  many  of  his  ideas  slowly  made  their 
way,  and  the  new  demand  for  strength  and  solidity  and 
sincerity  in  building  has  been  largely  due  to  him. 

But  much  greater  than  all  his  art  influence  has  been 
the  weight  of  his  moral  teachings.  No  preacher  of  the 
day  has  preached  to  such  an  audience  as  he,  and  he 
has  always  held  men  to  the  best  that  is  in  them.  Long 
after  his  idiosyncrasies  shall  have  been  forgotten,  and  his 
faults  and  foibles  given  over  to  oblivion,  his  precepts  will 
remain  to  influence  the  life  and  thought  of  the  coming 
time. 


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